 |
Software | News | Store | Support | Company | Blog |  |
 |
|
 |
|||||||||||||||
 |
©2005-2008 Embraceware Software Inc. All Rights Reserved. |  |
 |
||
|
Software | News | Store | Support | Company | Blog | |
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
©2005-2008 Embraceware Software Inc. All Rights Reserved. | |
|
||
December 20th, 2007 at 6:44 pm
Looks snazzy. I still don’t like that blue gradient though.
December 20th, 2007 at 6:50 pm
@Dylan - regarding the blue gradient. I’m using the same blue gradient as used by OS X. Do you have an idea of another style I can try to indicate that a button has focus? Thanks!
December 20th, 2007 at 7:19 pm
“Do you have an idea of another style I can try to indicate that a button has focus?”
A pink gradient?
=: >
Matthew
December 20th, 2007 at 8:12 pm
This is just a full screen version of the smaller alarm window, which is OK. Personally though, I am looking for a fullscreen Clock showing just the Time and Date. Plus it would be nice to have it with black background and Maroon text so that it is darker colored but readable from across the room at night. I use this as my clock at night, and the screen demoed here would be way to bright with the Album cover and buttons on the screen. If you can make an option for a simple Time/Date full screen and possibly make the background and text colors editable that would be much better. Perhaps the buttons could show up at the bottom of the screen when the alarms goes off or simply provide an option to hit any key or say the Space bar to Stop/Snooze the alarm (perhaps this be a configurable option) or still click the Apple Remote to Stop/Snooze. Let me know what you think.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Love the FrontRow look, very cool. Maybe the only thing I would change would be slightly larger text (except fort he clock, that size seems good), it just looks slightly too small IMO.
December 20th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Continues to look great, Jerry. I like the evolution of the full screen alarm view. As it relates to drawing focus to a button, I’m all for maintaining consistency with OS X. From a designer’s perspective it looks good to me. After all, sometimes less is more. With regard to customization, I’m all for power-to-the-people, but ultimately get concerned that too much customization unnecessarily overcomplicates the application from a front and back end perspective. Finally, I understand Britonius’s concerns, but think that a full screen clock view is a separate issue from this, the full screen alarm view. That said, a full-screen clock for for dim, across-the-room nighttime viewing would be brilliant.
Looking forward to the finished product.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:33 am
Thanks for all for the feedback guys. I am very interested about building this fullscreen clock that many of you mention. I would like to know how you would like this clock to function. Would it be user activated by a button on the Awaken UI, a hot key, or automatically appear at a particular event?
I can see it being a user activated thing by the user clicking a button or a menu to turn it on and when alarm time comes it would transition into the fullscreen alarm view.
Or are you seeing the fullscreen clock as a replacement option for the fullscreen alarm view? Meaning that only a big date/time is displayed on screen at alarm time.
I look forward to your feedback. I would really like to implement this.
December 21st, 2007 at 2:59 am
Jerry it’s perfect! Don’t change a thing! Leave it just like that!
December 21st, 2007 at 6:18 am
I do like the fullscreen alarm view you created. The font size seems fine to me as it will be fullscreen on my 17″ Macbook Pro so I should be able to easily read it from across the room. I like the blue button as it does fit in with the rest of OSX and it is a soft and soothing color.
Yeah, the fullscreen clock is a separate issue, and I don’t really have a preference on how to load the fullscreen clock but the menu, button, and hotkey are all good options. I will probably have Awaken running on the menu bar most of the time, so a menu and/or hotkey probably sound the best to me then you could leave the UI cleaner. I don’t see my self using an event to kick it off, mostly I will be kicking it off manually when I am ready to head to bed.
I could deal with it changing/fading into the fullscreen Alarm view as I should be waking up at that time and the brighter screen could help with that.
In fact if you really want to get fancy and come up to speed with the latest sleep/wake technology, you could have the screen brightness increase (as I usually turn my down to the lowest setting before black out) like the rising of the sun. It is suppose to be a more relaxed way to wake up. They make alarm clocks now that only wake by a progressive light like this one - http://www.hammacher.com/publish/70460.asp. Perhaps this could be an alarm option with or without sound that would help set apart your software from other alarm clocks. Any way, just an idea that popped into my head.
December 21st, 2007 at 6:24 am
@Britonius - the current version of Awaken already has a preference for fading the brightness in for alarms and fading it out for the sleep timer. Awaken 4 will include some improvements on this functionality as well.
Thanks for the feedback. I thinking about the following for ways to display the fullscreen clock:
- Option in the Awaken “View” menu
- Option in the Awaken menubar icon menu
- Hotkey set in the Awaken preferences
I’m interested to hear as much feedback on this clock feature as possible.
Thanks!
December 21st, 2007 at 7:31 am
Sorry I forgot about those settings. Yes, it does have a Fade-in and Fade-Out in the Volume Preferences, but they fade to black and fade-in from black which is not useful if I have a fullscreen clock running at night. Plus it doesn’t seem to actually control the brightness settings as once the sleep timer fades out and the timer stops the screen goes right back to full brightness. Also with the Fade-In it blacks the screen out first and then fades into whatever level I have the brightness set to, which is at it’s lowest setting at night with my clock running fullscreen. So it doesn’t actually seem to be controlling the brightness settings, correct?
OK, here is how I could see it working if you can give the program control over the actual brightness settings and give us the ability to control the level at which it stops. I know I said I would manually start the fullscreen clock, but after thinking about more it would be nice to add an option to the Sleep Timer to start the fullscreen clock once it finishes. So then it would flow like this, I would kick off the fullscreen Sleep Timer at the end it would turn my brightness down to my predefined setting and then it would load the fullscreen clock. It would run all night at these settings. My Wake alarm would then open the fullscreen Alarm window and fade up to my pre-defined brightness level helping me to wake up via sound and light. Does that all make sense?
Your other options to start the fullscreen clock sound good.
December 21st, 2007 at 7:49 am
Additional Clock Feedback:
I think the full screen clock should only display the Time, Day & Date. Sometimes in our disoriented slumber we forget what day it is which is helpful if it is displayed with the clock. If you want you could make it an option to include the Day & Date and the Time for that matter.
You could also preset the background and foreground colors, and if you do that I would suggest darker colors like black background and Maroon or Dark Red foreground text color. And if you want you could give us the option to set these colors as we see fit.
Other than those possible options giving us the ability to start it up via the View menu, menubar, Hotkey and launch at the end of the Sleep Timer would be sufficient I think.
Other Suggestions:
On another note, have you considered offering Chronoindex (countdown date timer) and Stopwatch functions into Awaken? I could see using a countdown date timer occasionally, to let me know how many days, hours, minutes, seconds are remaining until a certain date and time arrive, like my wife’s birthday or something ;-). Plus I could also see using a Stopwatch to keep track of how much time I am spending on an activity.
December 21st, 2007 at 9:11 am
Thanks Britonius - your feedback has been very valuable. I have a plan to incorporate many of these ideas while still keeping everything simple. Expect a blog post demonstrating this in the near future. Keep the feedback coming everyone - its been great!
December 21st, 2007 at 9:53 am
Great I look forward to it. It looks great so far.
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:41 pm
Fullscreen clock:
White: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/2129590431/in/photostream/
Red: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/2129590355/in/photostream/
Blue: http://www.flickr.com/photos/embraceware/2130368302/in/photostream/
December 22nd, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Red? White? Blue? America!? yay
P.S. Did you read my post in the previous blog post?
December 23rd, 2007 at 7:20 am
The fullscreen clock looks awesome! I really like the alarm reminder to let you know when the next alarm is set to go off. Of course I like the Red myself, but definitely like the American theme you have going
I would suggest making the day/date font larger and the alarm reminder a little smaller. Of course if you make the day/date larger the alarm font might work as it is currently.
December 25th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Jerry,
Could you make Awaken iTunes independant, much like the new Front Row in Leopard is ? = NO iTunes running
That’d be really great
(i noticed that you allow to play any mp3 in Awaken4, so I guess it shouldn’t be an impossible task
Thanks,
Sam