12Ghosts™ ShowTime

Enhance tray clock with custom colors, font, date, 2nd time zone

Tucows:

ZDNet Editor's Pick
Review by MendoClick

Show time, time zones, and moon phase
Synchronize with an atomic clock over the Internet
What exactly is Time?
Where does our calendar come from?

What does it do for me?

Enhance your taskbar clock to show the date and a second time zone. You may display seconds smaller and the date in a different color, for example. Everything is configurable, the display of the date and time, font, size, colors, alignment, and shadow effect.

Examples of what you can do with 12-ShowTime:

12-ShowTime displays the time and date either in the tray or in a free movable window, which can be set to stay in the title bar of the active window. It displays the phase of moon and age of moon. A configurable tray icon can display a part of the date or time.

It wouldn't be a real clock if it didn't have an alarm that can be set daily or at a certain date. You may choose as alarm melody any .wav or .mid file. The comfortable snooze function reminds you repeatedly until it is answered. With a configurable list of 12 world times in a separate, movable window, chimes every quarter, hour signal, chronograph, and quickly accessible countdown the program is powerful and a pleasure to use.

Resource Efficiency

We put quite some effort into having this varied clock be sparing with system resources. The result is an astonishing low memory usage and virtually no recognizable processor time.

First, we do not run a loop in any way, shape or form to wait for the next second to happen. Instead, 12-ShowTime activates a system timer that only fires once exactly to the full second. Otherwise, 12-ShowTime does not run as an active task!

12-ShowTime saves system resources because it does only what is absolutely required. For example, it might be necessary to update the time window or tray icon every second - but only if seconds are displayed. If you have only minutes displayed 12-ShowTime does not redraw the main window until the next full minute. The tray icon is repainted only once a day if you display only the day. 12-ShowTime routinely checks if any changes are necessary and - if not - returns without wasting time.

All drawing procedures have been optimized for flexibility and for saving resources. 12-ShowTime does not include 31 icons for each day and day of week, but instead creates the icons dynamically, providing for a smaller executable and full user control.

We made sure that all changes are only calculated, of course, if visible or selected: the tray icon, moon and moon text, world times, options title bar, alarm, and countdown. Even if you had all options selected and visible, 12-ShowTime needs almost no CPU time.