Control - Clock (text based) or date

Clock (text based) or date control

 

Supported file types	Not applicable
Playlist support	No
Scheduler support	No
Scrolling support	No
Rotation support	0, 90, 180 and 270 degrees
File locations	Not applicable
Training Videos	Repeat Signage Controls - Clock Control text-based and date (03:33 min/secs)
Training Videos	Repeat Signage Controls - Round Clock Control digital and text-based clocks (04:22 min/secs)

Description

This is actually a Text label control that updates itself.  When you insert this it defaults to the current date and time, such as:

03/09/2010 22:51:23

You can then change it's properties to customise this to display any one of the following:

22:51       
10:51 PM
22:51:23
03/09/2010
03 September 2010
03/09/2010 22:51
03 September 2010 10:51 PM
Friday
September
2010
September 2010
Custom format that combine any of the above

You can also change the time zone which allows you to use a time zone different to the system default one, for example GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) or US central time.  The culture can be changed which determines which language (English, French, Italian, etc) that the month and day information is displaying in.


Simple clock (text based) or dates

On the designer screen menu, click on 'Insert' then 'Clock (text based) or date'.  This simply adds a text based clock directly onto the designer screen in the format DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS.  Double click this text clock to look at it's properties.  You will see that this is actually a Text label control in clock mode.  This gives you the ability to alter the font and background colours the same as for normal text and also use pictures for either the text or background.  On any of the properties screen tabs, you can press the 'F1' key to get help on that particular tab.


Time zone

Double click your control to see time zone properties.  If this is left on 'DEFAULT SYSTEM TIME'  then it will use your computer's current date and time.  You can change the time zone to another location by double clicking your control and changing the time zone settings.  This is used to display the time at other locations in the world.  For example, you may have 3 clocks in your presentation.  One for London, one for Paris and one for New York.


Double checking that the correct time is displayed for another country

There are loads of Internet websites that will display the current time in places around the world, such as www.timeanddate.com.  You can then double check that if you add a clock showing time in France that this has been done correctly.  A few cites are listed below:

City	Website page
London	http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=136
New York	http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=179
Paris	http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=195
Tokyo	http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=248

Optional culture code

Double click your control to see culture code properties.  If this is left blank then it uses the computers default culture which depends on control panel settings, which is most likely to be UK or US English.  This is only useful when displaying the names of days or months in non-English languages such as French, Spanish, etc.

For example, the format code (see above) for displaying the name of the month is:

MMMM

If the culture code is set to en-UK or en-US and the month is 'June' then we get:

June

If we used the Italian culture code of it-IT then we would get:

guiugno

Code	Description
en-UK	English (British)
en-US	English (US)
fr-FR	French (France)
es-ES	Spanish (Spain)
es-MX	Spanish (Mexico)

For other countries, a list of these codes is available at:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee797784(CS.20).aspx