Clock (text based) or date control
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:
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
Select date/time format
Select a display format for your text clock. You can pick 'TIME', 'DATE',
etc from the list and see how the current date/time previews. This puts a
code such as 'dd MMMM yyyy' in the 'Date/time format box'. This then
formats the date or time based on this code. These are programming codes
which determine how the current date or time is displayed. These codes are
complex but we have left this open to allow maximum flexibility. To
format a code other than one of the standard ones, it is easiest to click on
each of the types in turn, such as 'TIME', 'DATE', 'DATE IN WORDS', etc and look
at the codes needed to display in a format you need common codes that you may
need are:
Code |
Description |
|
|
HH |
Hour number such as 08 |
mm |
Minutes number such as 45 |
ss |
Seconds number such as 23 |
dd |
Day number such as 30 |
dddd |
Day name such as Tuesday |
MM |
Month number such as 01 |
MMMM |
Month name such as January |
yyyy |
Year number such as 2010 |
You can also use separates such as '/' or ':' characters, commas (,) and spaces
to display a date or time in the format required.
A programmers reference for these codes is available at (but this isn't for the
faint hearted):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/8kb3ddd4.aspx
A word about fonts
This control uses fonts installed on your computer. These fonts need
to also be installed on the computers playing your presentations for your
presentation to look correct. See
Fonts in Repeat
Signage for more information.