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Microsoft Time Zone

Martin Brinkmann — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:43:00 +0000

There is no build in way to display different time zones in Microsoft operating systems. The clock in the system tray will always display the time of the selected time zone. Users have to rely on third party programs or the Internet to view multiple time zones at once. One of the possibilities is a small Microsoft application that can be used to display the times of various time zones in the Windows system tray. The application will pull the information directly from the default time zone list of the Windows operating system which means that every time zone in the world is covered by it.

The user can select the time zones that he wants to display at the same time. By default five time zones are displayed: London, Los Angeles, New York, New Delhi and Sydney. The software program makes use of balloon tips to display the time zones which means that balloon tips have to be activated for the program to work properly. The easiest way to enable balloon tips again is by using Microsoft PowerToys.

It takes one click to display the configured timezones in the balloon tip. A left-click on the system tray icon will display the time zones. A right-click opens up a context menu with configuration options. This can be used to add and remove time zones from the display.

Microsoft Time Zone uses roughly four Megabytes which is acceptable for users who regularly have to check the times in various time zones.

Display Timezones In Thunderbird

Martin Brinkmann — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 13:35:28 +0000

If you grow up with the 24-hour system you will have troubles with the 12-hour am/pm system. Add to that the various timezones and you are up for lots of confusion. If you regularly correspond with people from all over the world you should better know their timezone and how it differs from yours. This can be helpful before sending an emergency mail to your system administrator or starting a call to someone only to find out that it is deep at night over there.

FoxClocks can help by displaying various timezones in the status bar of Thunderbird. By default the time for the UK, US Pacific, Hongkong and GMT / UTC are displayed. Thankfully though the zones can be removed and others added if you need different timezones. You can perform a search for a city or country or pick one from the list.

The default format to display the time is Location: Day Time. This can be changed in the options to include additional information such as the date. There is also the possibility to move the timezones from the status bar to its own toolbar so that the information can also be displayed in the top toolbars of Thunderbird.

Even better is the feature that every timezone can be customized. An alternate color can be specified which will be displayed. This is for example excellent to visually differentiate between day and night.

FoxClocks is a highly customizable add-on for the email client Mozilla Thunderbird that can help users who work with people in different timezones.