Clock

[Johnathan]

Hey, I need a clock that shows in 12 or 24 hour time that people on the site can choose and I need the site to remember their choice. and actually updates just minutes. Also I need to be able to move it and set it on top of an image, I know this isn't JS but how do I do that once I get the clock.

[webmaster]

There are two easy ways for this. The first one is to save a cookie on the users computer with the setting for that user. The downside is that if he/she clears all cookies, the settings are back to default.

Another way is to save that user to a database with his/her prefered setting. You can save the IP and then set how the clock should look like for that IP. The downside is that many people have dynamic IPs.


I got an idea while writing this, I don't know how many countries that uses the different hour settings. But you could get a geoIP-dtabase, which checks which country the user are from, if they are from the US, it will display a 12 hour clock, if they are from europe, it will display a 24 hour clock. This is just for the "default" setting, you can still use one of the mentioned alternatives above for the customization.

I recommend the first one with cookies by the way!

[leonard]

Hey Johnathan

I don't have a clock example, but to your other question:

You can use the css-attribute "position" to place your layer (containing the clock) anywhere you want. Use absolute or relative positioning depending on how your site is built.

Code: Select all

style="position:relative;"

If you want to place it dynamically around the page, you can use javascript to move it around.

Here's an example:
http://devppl.chew.ch/layers/layerOverImage.html

about the clock:
If you use a javascript-clock, the time will probably be based on the client-pc (which can be completely wrong).
If you want the time based on the server-time, you might want to search google for something like 'AJAX-clock'.

cheers!
- leonard

[Johnathan]

Ok thanks alot guys, I like your idea webmaster of having it set for US and Europe, and still let them change it. Where can I learn about cookies and how easy would that be? I should be able to find the CSS stuff easy enough, I have a book lying around here somewhere. O and could I have a thing that lets them select their own background from a list of ones that I already have or let them link to their own, and I need them to be saved for them next time aswell.