Version History — Version 3.0 Highlights

Back to the Main Page — History Main Page

Version 3.0 — Released on 05 May 2008, UTC Global Clock 3.0 represents a tremendous increase in terms of functionality, while remaining true to its roots as an unobtrusive and reliable time display.

The first change is the application program's name: it's now UTC Global Clock; its predecessor was the venerable UTC Display. The addition of "Global Clock" to the name reflects the program's ability to display time from any world time zone, and, indeed, the program includes a searchable database of over 300 countries and regions. Some of these countries observe daylight saving time, and UTC Global Clock's database associates each time zone with its corresponding daylight saving time rule. Of course, you can change, add, or remove daylight saving time rules as needed.

In the below image, seven time displays are shown. The first is a menu bar time display, which has been clicked to reveal the UTC Global Clock menu. The remaining six time displays have been configured to display at the lower-right screen corner, and to match their surroundings. All such time displays — menu and screen corner — can be clicked to access a system-wide menu with several useful options, described below.

Here are the highlights of UTC Global Clock 3.0. We also have a full, non-illustrated change listing.

New Feature: Time Formats

Time Formats let you to specify how dates and times appear. Drag and drop time and date elements (such as hour, minute, etc.), special characters, and user-entered text to fully customize the appearance of time displays, as shown below:

Each time display may feature its own time format, as can the Dock. UTC Global Clock also features an Application Default time format.

New Feature: Stopwatches

Stopwatches can count upward to 23:59:59, up to a user-specified time, or down from a user-specified time. You may click on a stopwatch to pause and resume. A sample stopwatch is shown below:

The display precision is 0.01 second. Stopwatches float in front of all other application windows, and multiple stopwatches may be opened simultaneously.

New Feature: Hourly Chimes

Chimes (sounds) may be defined for :00, :15, :30, and :45 past the hour. The preference window is shown below:

You may select any of your installed system sounds — or your system alert sound — to use as chimes. An extra chime may be specified for any number of minutes past the hour.

New Feature: Timers

Timers may present alerts at a specified Local or UTC time, or after a certain amount of time has elapsed. They're great when you need to quickly set up a reminder, as in the following example:

Your spouse calls, and wants to be picked up in 40 minutes. With just a few keystrokes, you can start a timer that runs for 40 minutes, then plays a sound and presents an alert at the end of 40 minutes. Even if you have to restart your machine, the timer is still running when you re-open UTC Global Clock.

You can start as many timers as you like. Timers move to a screen corner when started, and you may specify the corner and the screen. In the below image, a few timers are shown on the left, with a stopwatch on the right:

Timers show time remaining as well as elapsed time, and the time remaining appears in red when less than 30 seconds remain. Once the timer reaches the end of its period, an alert may be "snoozed" by a period of time that you can specify.

Hide, edit, or cancel a running timer at will.

New Feature: Daylight Saving Time Rules

An unlimited number of Daylight Saving Time rules may be specified, using fixed dates and/or ordinal dates (such as "last Sunday in March"). UTC Global Clock contains the most common Daylight Saving Time rules, and the correct rule is automatically chosen when you select a time zone.

Other New Features in Version 3.0:

• Excellent documentation. Included is a License Agreement, User Guide, Read Me & Quick Start, and Keyboard Shortcuts .pdf files.
• Quick Calendar can display dates between 1905 and 2525. Calendars may be accessed via any time display's contextual menu.
• Date differences (where the displayed time zone's date differs from your local date) may be shown by appending "+" or "-" to the displayed time.
• Specify the default text for "a.m." and "p.m."
• Open at Login.
• Share preferences between users.
• Show or hide help tags (tool tips).
• Suppress warning dialogs on a case-by-case basis. Reset all suppressed dialogs.
• Command-clicking a screen corner time display to copy the display to the clipboard.
• Internet updating now fully updates and opens the updated application program, and presents warning or decision dialogs as appropriate.
• "Auto-Hide Screen Corner Time Displays" is now optional.
• Less-frequently-used time display preferences may be revealed by selecting "Show Advanced Options."
• You may now apply most of the selected time display's attributes to other displays by holding down the [option] key while clicking the desired attribute.
• An unlimited number of time displays may now be defined; the previous limit was 12 displays.

...plus much more. The full list is here.

Back to the Main Page — History Main Page