Der Browser Timer is a timer/clock/alarm add-on for the Mozilla FireFox browser.
It allows you to set an audible and/or visual alarm by specifying the alarm time in one of three ways: as a relative count down time (e.g. set the alarm to go off in thirty minutes), as an absolute target time (e.g. set the alarm to go off at 7:45 am), or as a regular interval (e.g. set the alarm to go off hourly at five minutes before the hour). In addition, Der Browser Timer can be set to signal the hour and/or half hour with an alternate tone like a cuckoo clock.
The program is functionally, if not visually, patterned after a clock radio, with a simple interface consisting of a digital time readout and several indicator icons that can be placed anywhere on one of the browser toolbars. Left clicking on the time will toggle between several display formats. Right clicking will open the main application menu where you can enable the alarm, access Der Browser Timer settings, and display Help information.
Der Browser Timer isn't designed for task scheduling or event planning - if you're interested in the latter, try the Mozilla Calendar extension.
Other features:| File name | Purpose | Location |
|---|---|---|
| derbrowsertimer.jar |
contains application files |
"chrome" subdirectory of DBT
folder |
| derbrowsertimer.js |
application default settings |
"defaults/preferences"
subdirectory of DBT folder |
View -> Toolbars -> Customize) and
drag the DerBrowserTimer icon
should now be displayed to the left of the time on the browser
menu bar. If you move your mouse cursor over the icon, a tooltip with
the alarm time
will appear. Right click on the icon and choose "details..." from the
context menu to
see more information about the current alarm setting. When the alarm
goes off after the
two minutes have expired, the icon will begin to blink and the default
alarm sound
should be played. To snooze the alarm, left click on the alarm icon; to
turn it off,
open the main menu and choose the now-checkmarked "alarm" item. If you
do neither, it
should turn itself off after sounding twice.
will be displayed to the
left of the time on the Der Browser Timer bar and the "alarm" menu item
will be checked. If you move your mouse cursor over the icon, a tooltip
with the alarm time
will appear. Right click on the icon and choose "details..." from the
context menu to
see more information about the current alarm setting. To cancel the
alarm, simply toggle the "alarm" item on the main menu.
will be displayed to the far left of the time
on the DerBrowserTimer bar and the "cuckoo" menu item will be
checked.You can set the cuckoo to alert you on the hour or on the half
hour, and specify a sound to play, via the Preference dialog. To
disable the cuckoo, toggle the "cuckoo" item on the main menu| Preference |
Default Value |
Description |
|---|---|---|
| Clock Tab |
||
| time format |
12-hour |
Determines how the the current
time and alarm times are displayed. |
| custom color flag |
false | If enabled, a user-specified
color will be used for the clock time readout, overriding the default
text color of the currently selected theme. |
| clock color |
none | Clock time display color. Only
used if the custom color flag is enabled. |
| date format |
"m/d/Y" | Controls how the date is
displayed. Choose one of the default
formats from the drop down box, or enter a custom string using any of
the three valid format characters [d = day, m = month, Y = year]. Any
non-format characters will be
ignored and displayed as text. To display a valid format character as
regular text, escape it with a backslash ("\"). E.g. the date format
string "\Year: Y" would be displayed on the clock as Year: 2005.
Only the first instance of each format character will be replaced with
the corresponding date value; additional instances will be displayed as
text. |
| cuckoo interval |
on the hour |
Determines whether the cuckoo
sounds on the hour or the half-hour. When the interval is set to half
hour, the cuckoo will signal the time in the standard way at the hour
mark (chiming a number of times equal to the hour) and once at the half
hour mark. |
| play cuckoo sound |
true | Enables/disables the cuckoo
sound. You can specify either one of the standard sounds, or a .wav
file of your choice. Tip: Choose a
.wav file with a short duration to avoid overlap: the cuckoo sound is
played at a rate of once every 0.75 seconds. |
| cuckoo sound type |
standard |
Cuckoo sound type - "standard" for one of the standard sounds, or "custom" for a user-specified .wav file. |
| cuckoo sound |
cuckoo1 (cc_cuckoo.wav) |
The cuckoo sound/sound file. |
| Alarm Tab |
||
| alarm timeout |
2 |
Determines how many times the
alarm will sound and how long it will persist before timing out. Value
is entered as counts: each count represents five seconds. |
| auto reset |
false |
Enables/disables automatic alarm
reset. If checked, the alarm will be reset after timing out as follows:
|
| use fixed snooze flag |
false |
The snooze increment normally
varies by alarm type (see snooze description in the Settings
and Operation: Alarm section). If checked, a fixed
user-configurable value will be used for the snooze increment. |
| fixed snooze increment |
5 minutes |
Increment added to alarm time
when the alarm is snoozed. Used only if "use fixed snooze flag" is true
- see above. |
| pop up alarm window |
false |
Enables/disables alarm
notification popup window. |
| flash browser window |
true |
Enables/disables browser window
flashing on alarm. If true, the browser window will be flashed when the
alarm goes off if the window does not have the focus. |
| show slider |
true |
Enables/disables the alarm alert
slider. On Windows platforms, the alert notification will appear to
slide up from the lower right corner of the desktop. This option may
not work on all platforms. |
| load urls |
false |
If true, a user-specified web
page(s) will be opened in the browser window when the alarm goes off.
Multiple pages will be opened in tabs. This feature respects the browser.tabs.loadFolderAndReplace
and browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground preference
settings. |
| alarm url |
"" |
The web page URL(s) that will be
opened in the browser window when the alarm goes off if the "load urls"
preference is true. Separate multiple URLs with a "|" character. |
| play alarm sound | true | Enables/disables the alarm sound. You can specify either one of the standard sounds, or a .wav file of your choice. |
| alarm sound type |
standard |
Alarm sound type - "standard"
for one of the standard sounds, or "custom" for a user-specified .wav
file. |
| alarm sound |
tada (alarm_tada.wav) |
The alarm sound/sound file. |
| Advanced Tab |
||
| clock update frequency |
every 1 second |
Determines how often the clock
updates. If
this setting is changed, the browser must be restarted for the new
update interval to
take effect. If you experience performance problems when DBT is
running, you may wish to increase this value (so that the clock updates
less frequently), though of course that will reduce the accuracy of the
clock. |
| compute browser uptime |
false |
Enables browser uptime computation and display. If enabled, the length of time the browser has been running will be added to the set of times displayed by the clock. |
Documents and
Settings\<user_name>\Application
Data\Mozilla\Profiles\<profile
name>\<random string> or something similar. On Linux,
it
would be ~/.mozilla.userChrome.css which is found in the Firefox
profiles area. If you'd like to modify the appearance of Der Browser
Timer and you're familiar with Cascading Style Sheets (or even if
you're not), you can add some DBT-specific rules (see below) to this
file.userChrome.css file in the sub-folder
called chrome in your profile
folder. It does not exist
by default, so you need to create it before you can start adding your
style rules. There should be an example file in the chrome
sub-folder, called "userChrome-example.css" which you can
use as a template. If you have not already done so, rename or copy that
file to userChrome.css.userChrome.css file with any text editor and
add (by copying & pasting) any of the rules listed below that apply
to
the element of DerBrowserTimer you would like to alter.#dbt-menubarclock-lbl {
background-color: cyan;
}
#dbt-menubarclock-lbl {
background-color: cyan;
color: red;
}
font-size,
font-family, and border. Refer to the World
Wide Web Consortium's CSS Specification and
related resources for more details about Cascading Style Sheets.#dbt-clock-tbitem {
background-color: black;
}
black with your choice of color as above. userChrome.css.| Error Message Text |
Description |
|---|---|
| Error 01: Invalid Count Down Setting - please reenter | Displayed when a negative value is entered for either the hours or minutes of the count down time (first alarm type) on the settings page. |
| Error 02: Invalid Alarm Setting - please reenter | Displayed when an invalid target time (second alarm type) is entered on the settings page. The hour value must be between 0 and 23, the minutes value must be between 0 and 59, and if not using military time, the hours value should not be greater than 12. This error message indicates that one of those conditions has been violated. |
| Error 03: Offset value too large - please reenter | Displayed when the offset period for the regular interval alarm (third alarm type) is greater than the chosen interval. See Settings and Operations. |
