New yaTimer 1.2 Windowing Features: Always on Top and Minimize to Notification Area

Disclaimer: this post talks about a new unreleased version of yaTimer – my task timer software, the software can, and will, change before the actual release – so there is no guarantee the new features I write about here will be in the release version. Details about the latest released version can always be found here. yaTimer 1.2 will be a free update to all current customers.

Sometimes you want your timer to be always visible, sometimes you don't really care – that is why yaTimer 1.2 not only let you set the task list window as always-on-top it also let you toggle between on-top and normal status with just one mouse click.

The on-top toggle button is located on the bottom of the task list window, near the zoom slider. With its gray on black color scheme it's almost invisible – I didn't want it to grab your attention away from the timers, when you click the button it will light up to indicate you are now in on-top mode.

The other new windowing feature is minimize into the notification tray– technically the notification tray should only be used for notifications and not for minimizing, so this feature is disabled by default. If you keep yaTimer open most of the time you can enable it from the options window.

There are 3 options to choose from, located in the windowing behavior group in the options window:

• Normal – This is how a normal Windows program behaves, not using the notification tray at all.
• Minimize to Tray – This option let you minimize yaTimer into the notification tray in order to save space on your taskbar.
• Always On – Select this option if you keep yaTimer open most of the time, clicking the close button (the X on the top right corner of the window) will not close yaTimer but will only move it out of the way – into the notification tray, to really close yaTimer you can use the main menu or the right-click menu on the tray icon.

When yaTimer is minimized to the system tray it is still running, you can make yaTimer show you all running tasks in a popup balloon and it will tell you when a countdown elapses.