Settings

Window containing all settings of the clock application. Settings are organized into the tabs by related functionality.

On the bottom left of the window, you can find drop down menu with various user interface theme presets. These themes relates only to the visual appearance of the windows and dialogs and not to the clock skins.

Clock Tab

Settings related to the clock skin face.

[1] Show Date - Displays day of month on the clock face.

[2] Show Second Hand - Displays hand for the seconds on the clock face. By default, second hand updates every second, but it can be configured to be updated on millisecond basis (see Use smooth Second Hand on Miscellaneous Tab).

[3] Show Day of Week - Displays abbreviated string of current day of week under the AM/PM string.

[4] Show AM/PM - Displays current symbol of before midday (Ante Meridiem - AM) or after midday (Post Meridiem - PM) time of the day.

[5] Show Face Numbers in PM as 13-24 - Enables to display hours in after midday (PM) part of the day as 13-24 instead of 1-12.

[6] Show Time Digits - Displays digital representation of time on the clock face.

Note: The format of the digits can be configured on the Time Tab.

[7] Show Time Digits Seconds - Enables or disables display of seconds in digital time view. This overrides also the time format setting on Time Tab.

[8] Show Glass - If enabled, clock skin is rendered with clock glass (if skin has glass designed). You might want to turn this option off when you for example use image on the clock, and the glass effect looks disturbing.

[9] Show Clock Image - By turning this option off, it is ensured image won't be displayed on clock, even if is explicitly defined.

[10] Preview Clock Buttons - If enabled, all of the available clock skin buttons are being semitransparently shown, when you move your mouse cursor over the area of clock. This way you quickly know, where particular buttons are located. You can turn this feature off, when you are familiar with location of clock buttons and previewing them all the time becomes disturbing.

[11] Use Today Info Button on Clock - If not enabled, the clock Info Button () is not accessible from the face of the clock and will not show.

[12] Use Today Info Left Click on Tray Icon - If not enabled, the popup window with information about current time and time zone will not be shown when you left click on clock Tray Icon.

[13] Use Today Info Over Tray Icon - If enabled, clock will automatically show the popup window with informations about today when you just hover your mouse cursor over the clock Tray Icon.

[14] Alarm Text Counterclockwise - Determines the direction of text rotation when it is orbiting around the clock on alarm.

[15] * Button - Resets the alarm text and shadow color to the default values embedded in the clock skin.

[16] Alarm Text - Configures the user defined color for the alarm text.

[17] Shadow - Configures the user defined color of the shadow of the alarm text.

Note: [16] and [17] override the color settings embedded in the clock. Use * Button to revert back to the clock skin settings.

[18] Clock Image - Allows for placing a custom image on the clock skin face.

After clicking on the Clock Image button, following menu appears:

Choose Image File menu item, to browse for the file (JPEG or PNG) to be placed on the clock face.

Note: It may happen, Clock Image will not be accessible. That's because some skins may not have the possibility of image on clock designed,

Choose Remove Image to discard displaying of a custom image on the clock skin face.

[19] Crop - Invokes the following Image Crop window:

[20] Crop Rectangle - Click and drag to move the view of image cropping rectangle.

[21] Crop Points - Click and drag to resize the cropping rectangle. If you want to preserve the proper aspect ratio of image, use only bottom right Crop Point. By changing the horizontal (top right) or vertical (bottom left) crop points, the image will be stretched to the particular direction.

[22] Crop Preview - Displays the preview of final look of the clock. Information on the bottom of the preview computes, what is the distortion ratio of the image. Whatever values it might display it always reads the image is proportional when those (x) and (y) values equals.

Desktop Integration Tab

On this tab you can customize, how the clock is integrated into the desktop of your operating system.

[23] Pin to Desktop - Keeps the clock just right above the desktop and bellow other application windows. Clock stays visible also when you activate the Show Desktop function (WinKey+D) - which hides all visible windows and just shows the desktop.

In Windows 7, this option is labeled as Normal & Show in Aero Peek - and causes to stay the clock visible when the Aero Peek function in Windows 7 is activated.

Note: When Access Key setting is enabled - pressing Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys brings the clock in front and while holding these keys, you can manipulate with clock as usual. After releasing those Access Keys, the clock pins back to desktop.

[24] Normal Window Position - In this mode clock behaves just like other windows on desktop.

[25] Keep on Top - Keeps the clock in front of other windows.

[26] Force to Front - Ensures, the clock is always the topmost. This is achieved by continually pushing the clock in front of all other windows. Because this front-pushing method would permanently steal the input focus, it is only available when clock is in the Click-Through mode at the same time. Force to Front is paused when you invoke any clock dialog window.

[27] Use Access Key - When enabled, clock becomes controlable with mouse anytime you press and hold the Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys at a same time. This is useful when clock is Pinned to Desktop or in Click-Through mode.

[28] Show Clock on Windows Taskbar - When enabled, shows the clock window bar on the Task Bar all the time (just like any other windows) and clock is also visible in Windows Task Switcher (including Flip3D). When disabled, the clock window bar appears on Task Bar (and in Task Switcher) only when you invoke some of the clocks dialog (eg. Set Alarm).

[29] Show Clock in Windows Flip 3D - (For Vista & Windows 7) - makes clock visible in its current screen position while the Flip 3D function is activated.

[30] Show Clock in Window - Enables display of the clock in window - if you would want to have it shown just like all other application windows.

[31] Click Through - Makes the clock unresponsible to any mouse interaction. In this mode, the clock is displayed but mouse clicks reacts with windows and objects beneath the clock instead of clock.

Note: When you enable the Access Key option [27], you can temporarily disable the Click-Through mode by pressing and holding Ctrl+Alt+Shift keys at the same time.

[32] Clock Transparency - Defines the default level of clock translucency, where 0 is completely transparent and 255 is completely opaque.

[33] Hide on Mouse Over (Transparency) - Defines to what level of translucency the clock switches, when your mouse cursor is over the surface of the clock. This way you can achieve the clock to release the space it occupies on screen, when you're over it with your mouse.

Tip: You can set both transparencies ([32] & [33]) in such a way, the clock will be initially hidden and will only be shown, when you point your mouse to the area of screen, where the clock is located (Show on Mouse Over). To do that, set Clock Transparency [32] to very low or zero value and Hide on Mouse Over to very high or full opaque value (255).

Time Tab

This tab of options is related to the way, the time and date is being formatted and configuration of the time zone of the clock.

[34] Time format - Offers various time formatting presets. This applies to display of the time on the clock face and in various dialogs the clock application uses.

[35] AM/PM string - Allows custom redefinition of AM/PM strings.

[36] Show Time Zone Label - Enables or disables the display of clock time zone on the clock face. If it is disabled, the clock can still operate in different time zone (eg. show the time of that time zone). So this option is only a visual - to show or not to show the label.

[37] Use Different Time Zone - Switches the clock into the Time Zone of your choice.

[38] List of Time Zones - Clock is retrieving this Time Zone informations list directly from the operating system, so you are getting exactly the same Time Zone list, as in the Windows itself.

[39] Local Time Zone - Click to set the local Time Zone. This information is being taken from the locale setting of your operating system.

[40] City / Place - Use this input box to redefine the displayable label of a particular Time Zone. Clock remembers changes to the Time Zone labels for each item of the list. When you enter the empty string, the default label will be filled in (retrieved from original listing).

[41] Show Daily Alarms in Calendar (Yellow) - Individual option to enable marking of days in calendar, that contain daily recurrent alarm. This setting is available individually for configuration, because recurrent daily alarm could fill up whole calendar view with something simple as "wake me up in morning each day" - and clutter among other event alarms, you are more likely wanting to have a quick overview of when looking at the monthly calendar view.

[42] Show week numbers in Calendar (#) - Adds one additional column in calendar view, that displays in which week of a year is the first day of a particular row of certain calendar month view.

[43] Start calendar Week on Sunday - Switches between rendering the calendar view with starting day of Sunday or Monday. Starting on Monday is quite usual in many european countries, while starting on Sunday is used in americas and many other parts of the world.

Note: [41], [42] and [43] options are present in the Vector Clock Pro version.

Miscellaneous Tab

[44] Start Clock with Windows - Use this option when you wish the clock to be started each time you log into the Windows.

[45] Use Embedded Sounds - Allows you to suppress using the sounds embeded in clock skins for alarm. When disabled, clock plays either no sound or custom browsed sound.

[46] * Button - Resets the color of the Info Window to the default value.

[47] Info Today Color - Allows for customization of the color of Info Window, which contains quick informations about current date, time and time zone. This option is useful when you're running more Vector Clocks on your desktop, and you want to be able to discern among them. This way you can assign for example red color to the clock in PST time zone, green color to the clock in EST time zone and so on.

[48] Clock CPU endurance - This setting directly influences, how much CPU time will clock application during its run require. By default, the value is set to 85 (out of 100) by which it requires around 1-2 % of CPU time each second. For the normal operation, you don't need to customize this value. Clock CPU endurance is more visible when the clock performs some animation during the alarm. Then the CPU utilization can vary from as much as 50% (at 100 CPU endurance) to 15% (at 0 CPU endurance).

Tip: To see how CPU endurance value influences utilization of CPU time of your computer, run Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Shit+ESC), find the appropriate VectorClock-Xxx.exe entry and continuosly change the CPU endurance value with the slider.

[49] Use Smooth Alarm - Switches between rendering the alarm animations continuosly or on each second. Disabling this option can provide benefit of low CPU usage by the clock when alarm rings in exchange for not having the animation smooth (but still functional).

[50] Use Smooth Second Hand - Allows for rendering the clock second hand on milliseconds resolution basis. When enabled, also positions of minute and hour hands are calculated slightly shifted to reflect the milliseconds positioning.

Beware: In this mode (when enabled) the clock invokes the graphics renderer for the clock hands as many times per second as possible (influenced by Clock CPU endurance setting [48] too). So the CPU utilization of your computer may become considerable (it may even cause to run CPU fans on notebooks) - so we advice to use this option with caution.

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