How to customize your Time and Date display


Customizing your time and date display, setting the time zone, clock mode, display fonts and colors, along with a number of other options requires the use of not one, not two, but three separate settings panels. With a little persistence however, you can tweak most every aspect until it's just the way you like it. For most of us, the functions accessed through the Adjust Date & Time panel, were taken care of in the First-Run Wizard, when we initially set up our user accounts, so I will save discussion of that panel until last, and if your Date, Time and Timezone are already set properly, you can skip that part of the tutorial. To access the various clock settings panels, right click on the clock display, and choose the panel you want from the popup menu. I'll start with the Configure Clock panel.

 

 

Here, in the topmost section, you can choose the type of clock to be displayed, whether or not to display the Date, Seconds, and/or a Frame around the clock display. In the center section you can set the Foreground(font) color the Background color, (note, however that the background color for the time display has never worked on any of my machines. No matter what color I set as the background, the actual color displayed remains the default gray shade, apparently a flaw in X4 not yet fixed), and the Font style and size for the time display. In the bottom section you have the same options for the Date display. Here, however, the background color option actually works. On the Timezones tab, you can select from numerous timezones in your own country and around the world. The next image displays the result of the settings shown above.

 

 

The next settings panel is the Date & Time Format control. This menu item opens the KDE Control Module, depicted below. Click the Date/Time tab to access the formatting controls.

 

 

 

In the Time section at the top, the settings are self-explanatory, as you can see. In the Date section, you can set the format for the Long Date Format, and the Short Date Format. Note that the Short Date Format is always displayed next to the time in the lower right corner of your screen. The Long Date Format is only shown when you mouse-over the Date display. Once you have your settings here the way you want them, click Apply, and OK, to save your settings and exit the panel. Note that clicking Apply, applies your settings immediately, so you can use this to "preview" your settings, and make sure the result you wanted has been achieved, before exiting the panel.

 

The final settings panel is the aforementioned Adjust Date & Time panel. If your Time, Date, and Timezone are already set properly, you can skip this section.

 

 

Here you can set the Date, by clicking on the correct day in the calendar displayed at the top of the panel. To the right of the calendar is the clock display. By clicking the up and down arrows at the right end of the digital clock readout, you can adjust the current Time up or down. By clicking the bar in the Timezone section, you can set your system to the timezone in which you live, and whether or not to automatically adjust the time for Daylight Savings Time. In the bottom section, you can set your system to adjust your Date and Time automatically, by accessing Time Servers on the web. This is a wonderful option, and works great if you have an "always on" Internet connection like cable or DSL. I understand that it can be problematical for those on dial-up connections. For dial-up users, I would suggest opening this control once a week or so, when you are online, and click the Update Time Now button. This will help to end that annoying gradual clock drift that happens with PC clocks. That's all folks! Now you know all you need to know about adjusting and configuring your clock display.   papabearak