| Presto's Presentation Timer |
| Presto's Presentation Timer is a simple, completely free countdown timer that sits in the corner of the screen and lets both the presenter and audience know how much time is left for the presentation. |
 FeedbackBy Preston Hunt, 10 September 2006 |
Presto's Presentation Timer is a simple, completely free countdown timer that sits in the corner of the screen and lets both the presenter and audience know how much time is left for the presentation.
Download now
Download PPTimer 1.1 (released Sep 10 2006) (note: requires Microsoft.NET framework!)
(Older versions also available: 1.0)
Have you ever been in this situation?
- Prepared 15 slides for a 30 minute presentation
- Just 5 minutes left and you're only on slide 4
- People keep asking nitpick questions
- ... and you haven't even gotten to the main point of your presentation!
If you've ever been in this situation, then Presto's Presentation Timer is for you!
Features
- Compact window sits unobtrusively in the corner of your screen
- Start/Stop/Pause functionality (use mouse or keyboard)
- Configurable timer duration
- Optional borderless mode
- When timer expires, timer can simply stop, stop and blink, or start counting up
- Configurable font
- Configurable background
- Configurable opacity
- Keep timer hidden until xx minutes remain
- New features in 1.1
- Automatically saves settings for future use
- New option "On Timeout -> Restart", automatically restarts timer when it expires
- Supports user-specified timer values
- Support for playing custom sound (.wav) when timer expires
- Saves window position
- Auto-start when entering full-screen/presentation mode in PowerPoint
Comments and Future Development
Please send comments, feedback, or feature suggetions to [email protected].
If you are interested in the development of Presto's Presentation Timer, you can join our Google Groups site (new release announcements will be made here).
Authors
Presto's Presentation Timer was originally conceived by Preston Hunt. All of the coding and development was done by Jim Rogers.
To Do List
- Keep timer hidden but show periodically every xx minutes
- Global hotkey to start/stop timer (ctlr-alt-shift-P, etc.)
- Bug - Time always defaults to 30:00 when starting, should start as last selected time last time program was run
- Make a Vista gadget
- Consider "Reset" menu feature that will reset the timer to the last selected time value (would be positioned below "Pause")
- Option to beep multiple times on timeout (On Timeout -- Loop Sound)
- Option to load on Windows startup (?)
- Single click/double click inside timer window to start/stop
- Add "Help" option to menu with some simple tips
- Add help on menu dropdown with keyboard shortcuts (or put in help above)
- When window gets close to a corner, "suck" it into position
- Visual Basic for Applications support: Setup, launch, control PPT from other apps (like Powerpoint)
- Command line switch to auto-start the timer (i.e., "/start"). Also read time if specified (i.e., "pptimer.exe /start 20:00")
- Execute a program instead of playing a WAV file when timer expires
- Warning lights at 3 and 1 minutes - background can flash amber just like it does at 0 minutes now.
- Ability to resize time to even fill the entire screen to use as a stand alone presentation timer.
- Contact us if you have any suggestions!
- Display a 2 pixel colored line that's falling down the left side of the screen over the duration of the timer, or something else like that (something not obvious to the audience)
- Add a text display when the time is up. An example use would be before the actual presentation starts. Having the timer programed to flash "please take your seats and turn off cell phones" would be helpful.