Feature #6: Field Validators

If you have to love one feature in Timepicker Reload it has to be field validators. For how long we all were waiting for something like this. With Timepicker Reload you get two .Net field Validators, RequiredTimeValidator and TimeRangeValidator. Both also provide full client side support. So here goes a quick overview of what these validators can do for you:

1. RequiredTimeValidator:
   Unlike TimePicker Legacy, Timepicker Reload allows you to leave the field blank. Now what if you want to make sure that user doesn't leave the time field blank. You need RequiredTimeValidator. It supports both client as well as server side validation to make sure that user has entered some value in the associated TimePicker field.


2. TimeRangeValidator:
   Now how many times there is case where we want to check whether the time user has entered lies within the specified time limits. Consider the case of office hours, now we don't want user to enter time for appointment beyond office hours like 9:00 AM to 5:00PM. This is where TimeRangeValidator comes into picture. It allows you to define the start and the end time. If the value entered lies within this time range the value is accepted otherwise user gets an error as defined by you. And what’s more, you don't have to take care whether user enters in 12-hr clock style or 24-hr clock style. It understands both time formats and validates time accordingly. And all this is handled seamlessly with client scripts, so that user sees response to their values instantly without waiting for postback response.

That raps up all the major features in Timepicker Reload part from some other fixes here and there. With all those features, Timepicker Reload makes it insanely easy to get the time information from user quickly, correctly and without any hassle of writing custom code. Now its time to bring this effort in front of you all. I hope you guys will love it. If you need any further information please feel free to contact me at support@dipeshbatheja.com.

And as always your comments has proven so important towards development of such a useful tool. My thanks to all of those who have contributed in this effort. I hope that your continued contributions through your suggestions will help me to further enhance the control. And if you feel this control has helped you in some way then I request to please provide your reviews/ratings at control galleries/directories like:

1. http://www.asp.net
2. http://www.123aspx.com
3. http://www.411asp.net
4. http://www.dotnetfreaks.com

If you have suggestion for listing the control in some other control galleries then please feel free to inform me.

Feature #4: Cross Browser Support

And the big one, finally you get cross browser support for Timepicker reload. Both the two major browsers are supported, IE5.5+ and Firefox. Now there is not much to explain about it. Rather I have something else to share with you all.

When Firefox was launched, I had a perception that this is just another marketing fad and why do I need another web browser when IE is already doing whatever I want? I never even thought of using Firefox. But then one fine day I decided to give it a shot. Let’s see how I feel after forcing me to use it for 7 days. Tabbed browsing was good thing, and those extra plug-ins which you can add was really cool. But apart from those things there was nothing much exciting.

Now we all now how much one browser can be different from other; while developing the cross browser support for Timepicker not only I came to know many such differences but what was really exciting was the versatility of Firefox vs. IE. It is just so intuitive. You can expect the HTML rendering exactly the way you wanted; where as in IE it is not always what you thought. Take an example of simple "Form" tag. Now you would generally expect nothing should be rendered on web page with regard to that. Now Firefox does just that, you don’t see anything on page when it renders the tag, where as IE renders it as a blank line. Now what’s the rationale behind it I couldn’t understand? . There are many such instances where you can expect the unexpected from IE, but certainly not from Firefox. It gives me feeling that IE is just a bloated piece of software hanging there on our machines with the help of duct tapes, and chewing gums.Now, I have not joined the list of people who hate MS. There so much that MS has done which has changed the world. But certainly one thing is clear that we all are so blinded by MS tools that we forget that there could be better tools out there.

Now remains the biggest and final feature of Timepicker Reload. Until my next post keep guessing and voting.

Feature #3: Skinning enhancement

One day you decide that Timepicker default blue skin is too boring and it should be replaced by something cool. So how do you do it in Timepicker legacy:

O..O do i have to set all those properties to get a new theme working. I would rather live with default theme. Now how we do it in Timepicker Reload:

Thats sleek, just one "PanelCssUrl" property to set and you are done with new skin. Yes offcourse that means you must create a CSS for it. But what if a default template is provided to you? You just need to experiment with colors. And what if some cool skins come out of the box with TimePicker? Isn't that cool? Check out some of the default skins you get out of the box:

Thats all about skinning enhancements and extra goddies you get with Timepiker Reload. Hope you would enjoy this visual treat.

Feature #2: Time or No Time

A web form can contain many fields, some are required and others are made optional. Its easy to check whether users have put any value in a text box or not. We can check the "TextBox.Text" property for empty or null value. Simple. Now if you are using TimePicker to get time information from user, you get the time not in string format but in "System.TimeSpan" structure, which cannot be set to null or empty. If user decides not to enter any value in time field, TimePicker Legacy will set its "SelectedTime" property to "00:00:00" which itself denotes a time (i.e 12:00 AM) . This is not what user inteded, he wanted to leave the value blank. So how to recognize this scenario.

TimePicker Reload provides a solution by defining a special constant value "NoTime". This is essentially a negative time "-01:00:00". Now if user decides not to put any value in time field, SelectedTime will be set to "NoTime" constant. Now there are many many changes that were required to make sure this solution worked. Like, what will user see if no time is selected.? What if some time is already selected and user want to clear it and make it blank?

Best way to tell about this feature is to show you some screens shots :

And here is what happens when you click Time button:

That raps up the second feature. Just to add more fun and interactivity I have put up a small poll to get your votes on feature coolness. You will see this poll with every feature I post here. So keep voting and enjoying new features :)

Feature #1 (or should I say a fix!)

So from today I going to let all of you know about new features that have been added to Timepicker Realod. Here goes the feature #1 (or should i say a fix!):

Now one of the complaints I received from devlopers on Timepicker legacy was that they are unable to disable/enable web control or what the heck! it just completely ignores your command when you ask it to hide/unhide. It just doesn't listen to some of those basic properties you set from properties toolbox in VS2005. All those property setting issues are now fixed. Now Timepiker legacy responds to almost all of those essential properties which you see in properties toolbox. Apart from this if you add some extra attributes using HTML editor of VS2005 (attributes like client side events onclick etc, style attribute or any other you can think of), those are also correctly added when the page renders.

Another designer thingy missing was the ability to adjust the width of the textbox by simply dragging the control in design mode. Now nobody likes to set the width property manually, why not simply drag the control and adjust the dimensions graphically. That little enhancement has also been added. You can now simply drag the control and adjust the width and height of text box part of Timepicker in design mode.

Hmm..ok what’s the big deal in this. Yeh, not really the biggest feature, but just an important fix of the issue in Timepicker Legacy.

Just hang on, it’s going to get better and better from here.

TimePicker Reload: Now Feature Complete!

And finally after almost 2 weeks of efforts, today Time Picker Reload got feature complete. And as this small but very useful control is moving closer to its vision, I feel more and more excited. I could only imagine in how many ways this control has solved a really annoying problem related to gathering time from users. Now finally, this is the control I would really like to use in my projects for gathering time values.

But there is still work left and when you are alone, it never seems to end either! The list of work items is still long. I have to clean the code files, create documentation, make sure that everything is commented properly, and create the deployment package and a lot more things before I can safely move to Beta stage. Now I expect to do all this preliminary stuff by Wednesday. Then will devote rest of the week in Beta testing. And finally move to next major milestone, "Release".

Now for this milestone, I have to create website that will contain all the stuff related to TimePicker. (C’mon are you going to do website on ur own too!) There are many things that can go into the web site. I could let somebody else do it for me, but I want to first create the basic framework on my own and then let somebody else complete the rest of the stuff. This is helpful because this make sure that things are done according to what you thought; otherwise you end up getting something totally different than what you expected. Trust me; I have already tasted this before when I outsourced some cool logo designer to do the TimePicker logo. Ultimately, I had to wake up the artist in me to design that logo myself.

Hey! What happened to those features that you were going to post about each day? Oh, yes I thought it would be better to post those features as I do beta testing. Just to keep those days of testing a little more interesting. So hopefully my next posts will be about the features. But just to give you an idea, there are around 6 minor and major enhancements apart from code optimizations both in client script as well as server code.

Tags: Time Picker

Time Picker Reload

It has been a while (a..a lot more while) since I have reported my progress. So now I am back in action and ready to roll. I have been doing lots of stuff. One of which is gathering feedback, suggestions from many of you who had downloaded TimePicker. Just to report you some facts. There have been 1400+ hits since TimePicker was made available 51 days back and that too just through directory listings and word of mouth. No advertisements or real marketing stuff. Clearly, shows some love towards TimePicker. Thanks to all of you early adopters. Now looking at those facts, TimePicker surely deserves its own space now. At least a web page of its own! I have been on lookout for a playground where all you can easily play with TimePicker and I have found a site www.dipeshbatheja.com. Now, nothing has been created there for the TimePicker right now, but this will be the place where you will find all you need to know about TimePicker soon. Definitely something to keep in mind.

Oh and the last and the most important thing; you have been using TimePicker for 51 days, some reported few bugs, some wanted few enhancements (Thanks once again, you all definitely deserve some special privileges.) So I guess now its time to reload TimePicker. From today I will be starting development work on TimePicker. Oh did I say TimePicker...sorry from now on TimePicker has been renamed to TimePicker Reloaded. For the next few days, I will be reporting to you features/bug fixes as they will be added to TimePicker Reload. So still some chances left to sneak in your feedback and suggestions. And last thing, many of you inquired to acquire the source code. Keeping those things in mind, TimePicker Reload will be launched in two paid flavors, TimePicker Reload Basic which will only include the .Net assembly (.dll) and TimePicker Reload Source which will include source code as well. Wait wait... what about the free stuff. For those who still want to enjoy the free stuff, the old TimePicker...a...I mean TimePicker Legacy from now on, will still be available free for download.

One more thing, all of the early adopters are eligible for special offers when TimePicker Reload is launched. Thanks to all of you who have provided there email addresses. Keep looking into your email boxes for that great offer mail.

Comments as always are welcomed...