Countdown

Download Countdown - A quick little program getting a big countdown on your screen. [104 KB]

Countdown Source Code

Download Countdown Source Code [100 KB]

Screenshot

"Why?", you ask. The computer notifies me when I have upcoming calendar events using Google Notifier. But, I tend to miss meetings because the notification is too gentle to actually get me out of my chair. So, I wrote Countdown. Countdown gives me a seconds count-down timer, and when it finally goes off, it plays a sound over and over until I stop it. Much harder to ignore.

Countdown has the Macintosh commands you'd expect:

save - as a clickable document with a text reminder, a time, and a sound. Just double-click on that saved document to get it again.
resize - you can make the window any size you like and the text resizes to best fill it.
active Dock icon - even if the window gets buried, the countdown shows in the Dock.
online help - On the help menu, of course.
Applescript enabled - Script Editor will show you Countdown's scripting dictionary.

For a programmer, the interesting things here are:

Stretchable Text - the text resizes to best fit the space.
Gradient background - the view background has an attractive gradient.
9-way stretch images - the art for the push button stretches, preserving the corners and edges.

Version 1.0 - initial release

Xcode 3.1. Apache license.

Compatibility: Macintosh OS X 10.4 or later. Macintosh Intel or PowerPC.

Other Source Code by David Phillip Oster

Page last modified October 25, 2009