Browser Tick Tock is a timer/clock/alarm add-on for UXP applications.
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, Browser Tick Tock 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 Browser Tick Tock settings, and display Help information.
Browser Tick Tock isn't designed for task scheduling or event planning - if you're interested in the latter, try the Mozilla Calendar extension.
Other features:
Your feedback is welcome. Contact me directly at jobbautista9@aol.com or post on the "Browser extensions" section of the Pale Moon forums.
BrowserTickTock - Timer/Clock/Alarm add-on for Mozilla
Copyright (c) 2004-2005 Charles Melhorn,
Copyright (c) 2021 Job Bautista
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307 USA
Or see the GNU web site at: http://www.gnu.org
You can install the latest stable version of BrowserTickTock from the Pale Moon add-ons repository.
But just in case you don't want to do that (e.g. you want to help with the development), then assuming you already have a copy of the package or know another place where you can install the add-on, open the installation file (named browserticktock_X.X.X.xpi, where X.X.X is the release number). Upon opening, once you confirm that you wish to proceed, it will register the extension with the browser and place an .xpi file on the extensions folder of your profile.
Once the installation has completed, restart the browser. The next time you start the browser, Browser Tick Tock should be installed.
Open the customize toolbar window (View -> Toolbars -> Customize) and drag the BrowserTickTock icon
to a toolbar. A digital time readout will appear where the icon is dropped on the toolbar.
(Note: The UUID for Browser Tick Tock, {2ba8678b-9b58-4636-afcd-84ebcda8a2df}, will be used as the name for this xpi file.)
Use the add-on manager to uninstall Browser Tick Tock. Open the extension manager by choosing "Add-ons" from the browser's 'Tools' menu, or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-A. Select the Browser Tick Tock listing, and click the uninstall button at the bottom of the window. Restart the browser to complete the removal.
As a quick introduction to some of the features of Browser Tick Tock, try using it to set a count down type alarm to alert you after two minutes. Right-click on the time display to open the main menu and choose "alarm". When the Set Alarm dialog opens, the alarm type will be 'timer' by default. Countdown times can be entered as hours and minutes, or simply as minutes, i.e. 75 minutes equals 1 hour and 15 minutes. Type '2' (no quotes) in the minutes box, an optional reminder note in the textbox below, and hit <ENTER> or click the Okay button.
A yellow bell 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.
You can control how many times the alarm sounds, whether it pops up a notification window, the auto reset behavior, and various other aspects of Browser Tick Tock's operation by selecting the appropriate options in the Preferences dialog. To open this dialog, choose "Preferences" from BTT's main menu. It can also be invoked from the Add-on Manager (Tools > Extensions).
BrowserTickTock can display three different times: the current time, the current date, and the time remaining until the alarm goes off. If you enable it via the preferences dialog, BTT can also compute and display the length of time that the browser has been running (browser uptime). Left-click on the clock to cycle through the various times; a tooltip indicating which time is being displayed will appear when the mouse cursor is positioned over the time display.
By default, times (current and alarm) are displayed in the 12-hour format. To use the 24-hour format, select the appropriate option in the clock panel of the preferences dialog. The date format and the clock readout color can also be modified via the BrowserTickTock preference dialog.
To set an alarm, right click on the time display to open the main menu and choose "alarm". Browser Tick Tock allows you to specify an 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).
When the Set Alarm dialog opens, the alarm type will be 'timer' by default. Count down times can be entered as hours and minutes, or simply as minutes, i.e. 75 minutes equals 1 hour and 15 minutes.
Target times are entered as hours, minutes, and time of day (am or pm). Choose "mil" from the time-of-day dropdown box to specify a time in 24-hour format. If you've set the clock to use the 24-hour format, the "mil" option will automatically be selected when the Set Alarm dialog opens.
For regular interval times, select the "On the" alarm type, set the desired interval, and enter an offset. Positive offsets will be added to the interval, negative offsets will be subtracted. For example, to set the alarm to go off at 10 minutes before the hour, you would select the "hour" interval and enter -10 as the offset. For 10 minutes after the hour, use an offset of 10. To have the alarm go off exactly on the hour, use an offset of 0 or simply leave the offset field blank. Use this type of alarm in conjunction with the "auto reset" feature to create an alarm that goes off periodically at a specified time, e.g. hourly at five minutes before the hour.
Enter an optional reminder message, then click the "OK" button or hit <ENTER> to set the alarm. As a convenience, you can automatically fill out the alarm form with the values from the previous alarm setting by selecting "last alarm" from the "Presets" menu. This might be useful, for instance, if you tend to use the same alarm setting repeatedly.
Once the alarm has been set, a yellow bell icon will be displayed to the left of the time on the Browser Tick Tock 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.
When the alarm goes off, the alarm icon will begin to blink. By default, BrowserTickTock will also play a sound, display an alert notification slider, and flash the browser window (if not currently focused). In addition, you can elect via the Preferences dialog to pop up a notification window and load one or more web pages in the active browser window. To silence the alarm, do any of the following:
To have the alarm automatically reset itself, enable the "auto reset" preference in the alarm panel of the Preferences dialog.
As with a typical clock radio alarm, you can "snooze" or temporarily push back the alarm when it goes off by left-clicking the alarm icon, by selecting "snooze" from the alarm icon context menu, or by using the snooze button in the alarm notification popup. The length of the snooze delay normally varies according to the alarm type: for the timer alarm, the snooze increment is 0.1 * countdown time, with a minimum of one minute; for the target alarm, the snooze increment is ten minutes; for the interval alarm, the snooze increment is five minutes. If you prefer that the same snooze increment be used no matter what type of alarm is set, check the "use fixed snooze increment" box in the alarm panel of the Preferences dialog and specify an increment value.
Note that unlike a standard clock radio alarm, you can "snooze" a pending alarm even before it goes off by left-clicking the alarm icon or by choosing "snooze" from the alarm icon context menu. The alarm time will be set back by an increment determined as described above.
To activate the cuckoo function, right click on the time display to open the main menu and choose "cuckoo". When the cuckoo feature is active, the cuckoo icon 
will be displayed to the far left of the time on the BrowserTickTock 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.
You can bring up the preference window by right-clicking on the time display and selecting "Preferences...". Modify the settings as desired, then press the 'okay' button to save the changes. If you don't wish to save your changes, use the 'cancel' button to close the preferences dialog.
The following preference options are available:
| 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 BTT 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. |
Browser Tick Tock preferences use the preference node "extensions.btt." and are stored in the "prefs.js" file (along with the other preferences in the browser) in the user's profile directory.
The appearance of the browser and its extensions is normally determined by the currently selected theme. It's possible, however, to customize the look of many aspects of the user interface by editing a text file called userChrome.css which is found in the profiles area. If you'd like to modify the appearance of Browser Tick Tock and you're familiar with Cascading Style Sheets (or even if you're not), you can add some BTT-specific rules (see below) to this file.
Tip: To change the color of the clock time display, you don't need to use this styling procedure - simply select the desired clock text color via the Preferences dialog window. For other elements of the BrowserTickTock UI, follow the steps below.
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.Edit the userChrome.css file with any text editor and add (by copying & pasting) any of the rules listed below that apply to the element of BrowserTickTock you would like to alter.
To change the background color of the clock, use a rule like
#btt-menubarclock-lbl {
background-color: cyan;
}
with your choice of color. This is a CSS specification, so you can use color names like red, yellow, cyan, etc. or RGB values in hex like: #FFCC00. To change both background and text color you would use a block like this:
#btt-menubarclock-lbl {
background-color: cyan;
color: red;
}
Other clock style properties you might wish to change include 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.
To change the background color of the entire BrowserTickTock bar, use
#btt-clock-tbitem {
background-color: black;
}
replacing 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. |