Version 2a has been posted on the Extension Exchange. It contains a fixed size Properties Dialog, and doesn't give you an error message when you install for the first time.

Get it now!

I've finished preliminary work on the 4th type of alarm. I'm going to work on the details window some and add more properties to the properties dialog. PM me if you want to test it the latest version.

Hello. I love the new version! I have been playing with it and I love the ability to loop or not (most of my wav files are too short for one play), to have sound on or off, user-defined dialog, and the ease of use.

One problem: whenever I turn off an alarm, it crashes DS. I'll see if I can figure out what is wrong.

------------
I just checked again and it happens everytime I have an alarm going off and I right click "delete" on that alarm. The alarm stops playing, the listing leaves the panel, and about 10 secs later DS crashes.

what type of alarm is causing the crashes, or is it all of them?

I only tried the timer alarm so far.
I'm trying a daily alarm now.

-----------
Yup, same thing. The alarm is going off, I right click and "delete," it turns off the alarm, and about 5-10 secs later DS crashes.

does it just close without a trace, or does it bring up the send error report dialog?

No dialog, Just quietly vanishes.

----------
I checked the error log, but the log begins when DS begins and is gone when DS closes, so there is no record.

look at that. i was able to reproduce that error. i will look into it promptly. thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Okay.

just to check, you have the alarm set to play a sound, but not show the alert window, correct?

I had both set.
----------
I'm trying it now with only the sound and no alert.

oh, well i tried again, and now it didnt crash....weird.

Okay, it happened now with only the sound on and no alert window.
---------
nm

does it crash if you silence the alarm first by clicking on the counter (line that says Alarms: #) and then delete the alarm?

Hmm yes. I just tried that. I silenced the alarm, and waited a bit. Then when I right clicked "delete" on that alarm entry, it went away and after about 5 secs DS crashed.

did you upgrade from the old version? have you tried installing the dspackage from scratch?

I tried to upgrade, and it said I had to disable the old one and close DS before installing. So I did that and installed the dspackage.

--------
I just checked and I do have just one AlarmPanel folder in my Application Data/Desktop Sidebar/Plugins with 4 files in it.

yeah thats what you should have.

I support the idea of merging the alarm panel finally with clock panel, please read this topic on DS Forum:
LClock and Calendar and Alarm Panel
Aside from that, great work, I use the alarm panel each day...

I remember that post. I haven't had a chance to look into that as the clock is as a standard panel developed by the mods and mine is third party and requires .NET. Also, this version as it is seems a bit buggy for me for official release but it is ok for ppl to download as extra for DS.

Maybe you make up a clock panel of your own with some of the features I suggested...
Coding the alarm panel made you deal with date and minutes and seconds whatsoever,
so it might be not such a big deal for you to go into it.
Of course, if you are willing and have enough time and nerves to do it...

When you get a chance, weekly timers would be great.

Maybe. If I can't find another idea after this one, perhaps I will look into an advanced clock panel, but I keep hearing rumors about kdam and the devs improving the clock, so I think a wait-and-see policy is best.

I_M - I have finished the code for weekly timers, but acommonjo says that it causes DS to crash on his comp. You can try it if you want. PM me and let me know.

Thanks to yyy, the alarm panel's next release will actually have an icon in the add panel dialog and on DS itself.

I'm looking for a way to show that an alarm is snoozed. Should I change the background color of the alarm? The alarm's text color? Should I change the title to reflect that an alarm is snoozed? I'm afraid that if I start playing with skinning, then the panel won't match some users skins. Any suggestions?

Change the alarm's bg color.
If a user wants to change the colors - make instructions or something.

I think that the you should do it with text colors. It is a problem - if you add more text it will catch more space and colors might be displayed bad. I would let the user choose the color to be shown. However, it will take you some time
How about using italic, bold and normal text ?

Interesting possiblitly. I could also change the status line of each alarm so that it has 3 states:
ON
OFF
SNZ

I really like GoMa's idea to change the background. That way, the user, at a glance, can see how many are enabled, disabled, snoozed, etc. Like, enabled alarms have a blue background, disabled has a neutral background, playing alarm is green, and snoozed alarm is yellow. Or I could just keep it simple and just have snoozed alarms be in blue or something and leave it at that.

You might have problems with the colors. As I said - it won't fit all skins so let the user choose the colors thourgh the panel. It is a better idea to use colors since the user can see it better.

If I use a dsskin file, then the user can go in and just modify the RGB values or the bmp file i use as a background. shouldn't be too difficult. that was why i didn't want to go there....it would mean the user would have to customize it themselves.

I don't think that many users will want to customize it themselves. That's why I suggest of letting them choose from within the panel but - it is your choice.

I'll have to deal with snooze later. New features finished so far for the next release:
1) Clear Disabled function - clears all alarms that are currently off.
2) Confirm Clear dialogs - confirms whether you want to delete all alarms or disabled alarms.
3) Properties Dialog check - makes sure you don't set the max alarms less than 0, and less than the current amount of alarms.
4) Custom Daily Alarm - daily alarm but goes off only on selected days of the week.
5) Uptime in uptime alarm detials window - lets you know how long your computer has been on so you can see how much longer the timer has.
6) Countdown timer in timer alarm details window- lets you know how much longer a timer has left till trigger.
7) Details window will update if pinned.
8) One Time Only Alarm - goes off on the specified day at the specified time. If the trigger date and time has already passed, then it applies it to the following year. Supports leap year checking as well.

Anybody interested in testing the latest version? PM me if you are interested. New features are listed above.

Still using the old one and don't want to make you jiggy with new ideas, but look at this 4074 screenie....
Under the extended window you see the small look of the panel, so you give the alarms icons like these,
and on mouse-over, they show thier name... And they could be aligned like they are shown there...
In columns... And the screenie might help you with your colour problem. Use an icon for each alarm and
you have three colours of icons for your three states... Easy and without having to change any colour...
The bell you see might also be a nice icon for the title bar or the panel, but you decide...

By the way, is it hard to include the analog clock into your alarm panel? I know I asked before, but
I still like the idea of haveing both combined and the developer of the analog clock might find it more
or less interesting, too...
Anyway, thanks for your work, I really like if panels have a progress or get a workover...

JeffSmart,
What program is that a screenshot of so I can have a better look at it?

It is a screenshot of Longhorn b4074 Sidebar.

Oh. Well I certainly don't have that. So would someone with that build of Longhorn Sidebar could explain to me what each part of the panel does? Perhaps I can do something similar to my panel. A screenshot with descriptions would be helpful.

I'll ask of friend of mine to give me some screenshots, but for now I can only tell you what I saw and what I screened. So you have a panel, that shows in normal state between the seperators on the left side a big bell which allows you to turn on and off the sound of the alarms that are listed. Right from the bell, you have some columns that list the alarms from top to bottom with speakbubbles, each of it has a different colour because they are not only alarms but other things like rules or tasks. Maybe you include three various icons for various alarms like private (birthdays,...), business (meetings,...), fun (DVD/record release,...). Whenever you hover over a bubble, it shows the date and title of the alarm. When you have the extended window opening, it shows things like in my posted screenshot. You can view and browse the bubbles within a window, listing all alarms under certain categories. Maybe you can integrate a selection box making it available to show only the fun alarms, the the business alarms, etc. without turning the others off so anyone can only display his business alarms at work and vice versa... The options to turn off the alarms for xx minutes is not a must, but hey, if it's not hard to code, go for it...

I'd love to see you realize this, if you need some bell graphics, be sure to let me know...

I hope to have the latest version working before this semester in school is out. Perhaps I will put in lots of work over winter break. In the meantime, I have one error I need to find, and some testing on the newer builds that have fixed some bugs that have been frustrating me.

School is definitely a waste of time.
So much time which could be used to panels programming...

I think I'm ready to post the latest beta so I can release a new panel. I will add it to this post when I am home later.

New Features:

1) Clear Disabled function - clears all alarms that are currently off.
2) Confirm Clear dialogs - confirms whether you want to delete all alarms or disabled alarms.
3) Properties Dialog check - makes sure you don't set the max alarms less than 0, and less than the current amount of alarms.
4) Custom Daily Alarm - daily alarm but goes off only on selected days of the week.
5) Uptime in uptime alarm detials window - lets you know how long your computer has been on so you can see how much longer the timer has.
6) Countdown timer in timer alarm details window- lets you know how much longer a timer has left till trigger.
7) Details window will update if pinned.
8) One Time Only Alarm - goes off on the specified day at the specified time. If the trigger date and time has already passed, then it applies it to the following year. Supports leap year checking as well.
9) Can select mm/dd/yy or dd/mm/yy formats in properties dialog

v3.0 beta! Let me know if installation works OK and if you have any problems!

Download and test, folks! If things go well, it will most likely be the same version on the Extension Exchange, so get it first here!

I'm taking votes to see if people want this feature. Do you think that automatic looping should discontinue after a certain amount of time? So instead of looping for eternity, it would stop after a certain amount of time. Many real alarm clocks have this feature. Just wondering if people want it.

So far, no meltdowns. The alarm played.

Working fine for me.

Good, I'm glad. What about the question I asked above?

Well, I don't really care. I guess you could limit it to several minutes if you want, it isn't like real alarm clocks - the battery cannot die.

I know, but I guess if no one is there to stop it, it might annoy people. Like if you have a roommate or at work....

Also, does the Open Sound dialog box open to the last file you opened to in the past, or should I add a default folder option to the properties dialog?

I added a feature to specify the number of seconds you want on the timer alarm as well, and so the Timer Dialog looks different from the Daily Alarm dialog, so there will be no confusion now