MiniTime makes you see red

Well, actually, it’s optional – and other colours are available. The latest version of MiniTime has just been released by Fred Graute. The application, designed from the outset to be small and unobtrusive, displays the date and time in a small icon or window, which can be in a fixed position on screen and configured to appear above all other windows, to disappear briefly so as not to get in the way, and more besides. Version 1.09 of the software adds a number of choices relating to colours:

Adjust the action of a right click on the Switcher icon

And then say “Ta, Fred!” for Tamarc! Astute observers of how our beloved RISC OS user interface works will have noticed that clicking with Select on the Switcher icon – aka the Task Manager, at the far right of the icon bar – does one thing, while an Adjust click on it does… the very same thing. In both cases, by default, they open the Tasks window, which shows you how memory is allocated, which applications are running and so on.

MiniTime gains a flux capacitor button

Can now bring you back to the future. Or the past. It depends where you start. Fred Graute has released a new version of MiniTime, bringing it up to version 1.08. The application displays the current date and/or time in a small window or icon, so that it is readily visible, yet unobtrusive at the same time – it doesn’t get in the way with the computer’s general, day to day use.

StrongHelp 2.90 released with three claws

Oops, sorry, I meant released under a three clause licence. Silly me. Fred Graute has released a new version of StrongHelp with some changes not only to the software, but also to the licence under which it is available – now the three-clause BSD licence. The software is designed to be a simple hypertext system, and considering its original release was at least twenty four years ago it has certainly proven the test of time, and remains a popular method of distributing manuals with RISC OS software.

RISC OS Awards 2016 results

The RISC OS Awards poll for 2016 was brought to a close on 29th February. As before, the results were processed and counted on a RISC OS computer (using a home-brewed program to turn the votes into a file for each category, ready to be loaded into Fireworkz), and initially announced on the @RISCOSitory Twitter feed. Those results are now online on the RISC OS Awards website and the various winners have been notified – where possible – by email.

RISC OS Awards 2016: Alternative options revisited

If you have yet to vote, here are even more options for you – so why not get voting NOW? The RISC OS Awards 2016 voting form was put online on 18th December, and while the number of votes looked promising compared to last year the first time the alternative options were published, this is no longer the case. When the second round of alternative options were posted last year, approximately seven weeks after the polls were opened, the voting form had been completed approximately 140 times. Today – also…

News nybble: StrongMen 1.27 released

Originally developed by Guttorm Vik in the late 1990s as part of his editor project – which today we all know and love (Zap users excepted) as StrongED – StrongMen can display a hierarchical menu structure based on the contents of a text file. The menu entries can be used to run applications, launch URLs in the default web browser, provide a list of open files, and more. Fred Graute, the application’s current maintainer, has just released version 1.27, which offers full Choices support, three new commands for use in…

StrongHelp given a leg-up to version 2.89

Eigen see why a new version was needed. Fred Graute has released a new version of StrongHelp, the simple hypertext system for designing and reading on-screen manuals, help texts, etc. The software dates back to a time when the world wide web, and HTML, was largely unknown1, and provided a neat way for software developers – particularly small companies and hobby programmers, who might not have had the resources to produce full-blown manuals – to include manuals with their software that were something more than just text files.