Back to the top: WakeUp Back to Timers view Next to About view

Settings view

The Settings tab allows you to customize your WakeUp installation to match your personal preferences.

Colors

The top section of this view is dedicated to color choices - yours! When you buy an alarm clock or other household appliance, you're given very few color choices, if any. Incidentally, this is why we chose the "Standard Almond Appliance Drab" as the standard box color for the Alarm Clock view, and repeated it as the background color of this document. WakeUp's Settings view lets you change the basic colors of the display, buttons, and yes, the case itself.

The 6 buttons in the upper-left corner let you set the colors of WakeUp's Alarm Clock view. To simplify the task, a mock-up of the Alarm Clock view is in the upper-right corner of this screen. Any changes you make will be made imediately to the mock-clock. Just don't try to set the time, because the mock-clock doesn't ever change its time. Press any of the 6 color keys (on the left), and you get a dialog that allows you to change a specific clock feature's color:

Primary Color Primer

In 2nd grade, we all learned that Red, Yellow, and Blue are the "primary colors", but these work in nature through reflection and refraction (light reflection and refraction came later than 2nd grade). Your computer screen probably doesn't use a cathode ray tube, but all the earlier designed big heavy displays do, and operating on their own laws of physics, they need a different set of "primary colors". Because of them, every color on your screen is made up of a combination or Red, Green, and Blue, as these are the "primary colors of the computer age". Yes, Green, not Yellow.

The colors are set by a range from 0 to 255, in order of their intensity. By that logic, a color with a Red value of 0 would have no red in it at all, and a color that had no value for Green and Blue, but had a Red value of 255 is very red. A value of 0 for all three colors makes black, and a value of 255 for all three colors makes white. For every color where Red, Blue, and Green have the same value, a shade of grey (gray?) is made. I know, in Crayola world, mixing Red Blue and Green gives us Brown, but we're in Cathode Ray Tube world now. I've heard people say brown is a difficult color to make on a CRT. If you really want Brown in Cathode Ray Tube world, you can do it. Just make sure there's more Green than Blue, and more Red than Green. See?

Each of these 6 buttons sets a specific feature as described below:

Button Color sets the color of the control buttons on the Alarm Clock view. Not only the Snooze bar, but the On/Off and Exit buttons as well. In the mock-clock, you can see the Button Color in the Snooze bar:

Button Flash sets the color of the flashing Snooze bar. When the snooze is active, it flashes between its original color and this color. In the mock-clock, you can see both, the Button Color and the Flash Color in the Snooze bar: It just won't stop flashing. Press it, it won't stop! This is for demonstration purposes only.

Alarm Color sets the color of the alarm's description and sound file names in the Alarm Clock view.

Button Text sets the color of the text on the control buttons of the Alarm Clock view. Not the button color, but the color of the text on the button...

Time Color sets the color of the date and time in the Alarm Clock view. For some reason, everyone seems to pick up on this one right away.

Case Color sets the color of the Alarm Clock view's "case". No, not the button again, look behind the button. Not the black bar above but, the.. yes, the "Standard Almond Appliance Drab" part. To make WakeUp look like a household alarm clock, we made this part of the display appear as the "case", so you can, of course, change the case color.

That's all the colors we let you change. You may be thinking "Hold on, what about the Black background and the Yellow scrolling urgent message colors? Why can't we change those?" Well, that's a valid question, and we're glad you thought of it.

Leaving these two colors alone ensures that you can always read the urgent message. Some people deal with pranksters on a regular basis. If a prankster wanted to get you into trouble, one easy way would be to change your urgent message color to black (so you'd never see it). We like pranks too, but this could have bad consequences, so we decided to keep this from ever happening by disallowing those two color changes.

Back to the grey (gray?). The rest of the Settings view is colorless, dull, and quite useful.

Snooze Duration (in minutes) This allows you to specify the number of minutes the Snooze bar is active when pressed. This can be set anywhere from 1 to 30 minutes. I'd like to ask somebody responsible why 7 minutes is the best snooze time, as that's usually what alarm clocks insist is the only valid snooze duration.

Default volume With this setting, you can specify WakeUp's initial volume level every time you start it up. Volume ranges from 0 to 100, 100 being the loudest. The volume can be changed at any time from the Alarm Clock view, regardless of this setting. Volume will simply be at this level initially.

Default Alarm File Directory Pressing this Change Directory button brings up a file dialog much like we saw when loading sounds in the Alarms view, but this one's not for loading anything.

This allows you to select which directory on your system we use to store your alarms. When you create an alarm, we store it to disk so it will always be around. To select a directory as the "chosen one", press the big Select button in the dialog. Pressing Open will not work on some operating systems, as they get confused about whether you want to look inside a directory or select it as "the directory". Choosing an alternate directory for alarms lets a system administrator customize your installation in a way they normally prefer (if you're an administrator, you get why, and if you're not, you really wouldn't care).

Default Timer File Directory, Default Sound File Directory, and Default Music File Directory Pressing these buttons bring up dialogs just like the one for changing the Default alarm File Directory, so much like it that we won't show you another picture of it. The Default Timer File Directory is the directory in which Timers are stored. This directory should not be changed unless absolutely necessary, as it is important for the proper operation of Timers. The Sound File Directory and Music File Directory are quite similar in nature, and only differ in purpose. The Sound File Directory is the directory first opened when adding sounds to an alarm. The Music File Directory is the directory first opened when adding tracks to a Myoozick Player's track list. Since some people will like sound effects for alarms, but want only music in the Myoozick Player, we made this distinction between the two directories.

This setting allows you to select which directory on your system we use as the default place to start looking for sound files when you're adding sounds to an alarm. Many people have large directories chock-full-o-sound files (like MP3s). If you're one of these people, you'll probably want to set your top MP3 directory as the Default Sound File Directory in WakeUp. Some people may prefer to set it to c:\windows\media, but we don't understand why... tada.

Move window to front on alarm You can't please everyone, but we're trying. This simple setting is more important than it appears at first glance.

Thanks to annoying junk popup windows from the web, most people are now quite sensitive about what they want to see on their screen and when, justifiably so. Because of this, any windows that jump in front of other windows are usually rude. Yet for some using WakeUp, if an alarm sounds, you want to see what time it is, and see the message description (and you may want quick access to turn off the alarm as well). For these people (of which I am one), we allow setting this option so WakeUp will move in front of the other windows on the screen every time a new alarm fires. It will do this time after time, unless you minimize WakeUp (sending it to hide down in the task bar). Whenever minimized, WakeUp remains minimized.

If popping in front of other windows makes you think WakeUp is a junk web popup, by all means turn this setting off and be happy.

Switch to Alarm Clock view on alarm Similar to moving the window to the front when an alarm fires, you may want to have WakeUp's main window switch to the Alarm Clock view when an alarm fires. This gives you quick access to turn off the alarm, or at least see what the alarm description is.

Save Ok, it's not actually an option, but I thought we should tell you how these button work, because it's a little different from other applications' standards.

All the settings you change in this view are immediately applied across the application, but only on a temporary basis. In other words, if you change a color and want to see it on the big Alarm Clock view, go ahead and change the tab to the Alarm Clock view to see your change. The Settings view will patiently await your return when you're ready. If you exit WakeUp without pressing this Save button (or using the ^S shortcut), the changes you made will not be kept for the next session of WakeUp you start. The new session will look and act just like this one did before you made any changes. Type ^S or press the Save button though, and all your modifications to the settings become permanent. If you decide you want to go back to previous settings before saving, you can press the Cancel button or hit the Escape key, and the settings will revert to their previously saved values.

It's more difficult to architect software that handles preferences in this way, but we strongly feel this "try it before you buy it" approach to setting user preferences is a valuable feature and we like promoting it.

Settings Not Available In the Settings view

A few additional settings can be modified for your WakeUp installation, but are not available through the Settings view. These are best left for your system administrator to control. If you are your own system administrator, read on here, otherwise please disregard. The settings made through the above Settings view are saved to the WakeUp.ini file in the installation directory. For most settings, it is best to use the Settings view, as manually editing them can render features of WakeUp inoperable or at least unattractive (colors). Only a few settings are available in the WakeUp.ini file that are not accessible through the Settings view, as depicted below:

The settings greyed out above are better handled through the Settings view. The remaining settings with the white background above are best configured per-site rather than per user. This is because they affect the way WakeUp works, which should be consistent across your company's site. Each is described below.

PLAY_MYOOZICK=true Set to true, this setting determines the large Play Myoozick button should be displayed at the bottom of each WakeUp screen. Displaying the button makes the WakeUp Myoozick Player available to the user. Of course, hiding the button takes the Myoozick Player away.

LAUNCH_TIMER=true Set to true, this setting determines the large Timer button should be displayed at the bottom of each WakeUp screen. Displaying the button makes the Timer widely available to the user. Hiding the button does not take Timers away, but if the Timer button is not available, the New button of the Timers view is the only way to create Timers.

AUTO_START_TIMER=true An active Timer is currently incrementing its time. An inactive Timer is paused. This setting determines whether a brand new Timer is automatically active or paused when first opened. If set to true, the new Timer is immediately incrementing its time as soon as its window opens. Otherwise, the new Timer would have to be started by pressing the Start button of the Timer window. If AUTO_START_TIMER is turned on, the Start button is never seen as a Start button, as its only uses are to Pause or Resume the Timer's incrementing clock.

Back to the top: WakeUp Back to Timers view Next to About view