FoxClocks FAQ
FoxClocks shows the wrong time. What can I do?
Why can’t I find San Francisco, etc. in the Zone Picker?
How do I customize the format of the statusbar/toolbar clocks tooltip?
Why won’t FoxClocks remember my settings after I restart Firefox/Thunderbird?
When I resize a window, the pointer moves too fast and the bottom of the window flickers. What’s happening?
Why can’t I resize popup windows? Where have my scrollbars gone?
Can FoxClocks synchronize my computer’s time with a remote server/atomic clock?
How do I uninstall FoxClocks?
FoxClocks really has gone wrong. What can I do?
FoxClocks shows the wrong time. What can I do?
FoxClocks retrieves GMT/UTC from your Operating System (it does not synchronize GMT from a remote server, a job best done by your OS). If this GMT value is incorrect, FoxClocks will not work properly until you correct your system time/time zone settings (this may even involve updating your OS). You can check that your system is reporting GMT correctly in the GMT/UTC section of the Time Zone Data tab of the Options window (timeanddate.com is a good source for current GMT). Note that your system may be incorrectly reporting GMT even if the system clock shows the correct local time.
If you’re still having problems, make sure that you are running the latest version of FoxClocks (the version number is visible at the bottom-right of the main FoxClocks window), and that your time zone database is up-to-date. If you’re still having problems, see this FAQ.
Why can’t I find San Francisco, etc. in the Zone Picker?
* Please upgrade to FoxClocks 2.0 or later, which adds a number of major cities to the Zone Picker *
The Zone Picker covers virtually all the world’s time zones by country and region. It does not cover all zones by city, however. If you want to find the time zone for a city not included in FoxClocks, browse the Zone Picker by country and region, and - if you like - rename the location after you’ve added it to the Watchlist.
How do I customize the format of the statusbar/toolbar clocks tooltip?
FoxClocks allows you to configure the statusbar/toolbar clocks, statusbar/toolbar clocks tooltip, and FoxClocks window clocks separately. When changing time formats in the Options window, select the appropriate entry in the ‘Determines how the time is displayed in…’ drop-down menu.
Why won’t FoxClocks remember my settings after I restart Firefox/Thunderbird?
This can mean Firefox/Thunderbird is crashing on exit or that there’s a ‘ghost’ Firefox/Thunderbird process after all windows are closed.
Under Windows, you can use the ‘Processes’ tab of the Task Manager to check whether there’s a ghost firefox.exe/thunderbird.exe process still running after you’ve shut down your application. If there is, you can use the ‘End process’ button to kill it. Other OSes have similar procedures to deal with ghost processes.
When I resize a window, the pointer moves too fast and the bottom of the window flickers. What’s happening?
This seems to be a Firefox/Thunderbird bug which is triggered by FoxClocks code. See Bugzilla for details.
Why can’t I resize popup windows? Where have my scrollbars gone?
* Please upgrade to FoxClocks 2.0 or later, which addresses this issue *
What you’re seeing is a known issue which seems to be a Mozilla application bug: if there’s too much content on the statusbar, web content and the vertical scrollbar overflow beyond the right-hand side of the window, but there’s no horizontal scrollbar. Often the window is not resizable. FoxClocks does tend to take up space on the statusbar. However, anything that causes the statusbar to overflow, e.g. putting Forecastfox in the statusbar, will also trigger this behaviour. One solution is to place FoxClocks in a toolbar (e.g. next to the main menubar, or in your bookmarks toolbar or navigation bar) where this isn’t a problem.
Alternatively, you can reduce the space taken up in your statusbar by modifying your time formats - for example, use short-form day names e.g. Wed; rename New York as NY - or by displaying the FoxClocks icon instead of multiple clocks: clocks will show in the tooltip when you hover your mouse over the icon.
Can FoxClocks synchronize my computer’s time with a remote server/atomic clock?
No - modifying the sytem time is a privileged operation best left to the operating system. All modern OSs have an automated mechanism for synchronizing their time with a remote computer using a sophisticated protocol called NTP.
How do I uninstall FoxClocks?
You can uninstall FoxClocks just like other Firefox/Thunderbird extensions. Go to Tools->Add-ons (or Tools->Extensions), click on FoxClocks, and then click on ‘Uninstall’. There’s more information about uninstalling extensions at mozilla.org.
FoxClocks really has gone wrong. What can I do?
You have the latest version of FoxClocks, none of the above FAQs apply, and there’s still a problem. In this case, you should consider resetting all Foxclocks parameters to their default values. To do this:
- Go to the special URL about:config (do not click the link - type it in the Firefox Location Bar)
- Enter ‘foxclocks’ (without quotes) in the Filter box towards the top of the window
- Right-click on each bolded entry below the Filter box and select ‘Reset’
Note that re-installing FoxClocks will not reset these parameters.
If this doesn’t help, it may be that your Firefox/Thunderbird ‘profile’ folder has become corrupt; see this Mozillazine article for ways to fix a broken profile.
Whether or not the above approaches help, if you think you’ve found a bug in FoxClocks please contact us, ideally including all relevant diagnostic/error messages and your current FoxClocks settings. See the following for details on how to obtain these.
FoxClocks logs informational and error messages to the Error Console (called ‘JavaScript Console’ in Firefox/Thunderbird 1.5), which you can access from the ‘Tools’ menu. To see all Error Console messages, click on the ‘All’ filter at the top. (Note that other Firefox/Thunderbird components also log messages to the Error Console; FoxClocks messages always start with ‘FoxClocks’.) To copy a message to the clipboard, right-click on it and select ‘Copy’.
Normally, FoxClocks logs a single diagnostic message as Firefox/Thunderbird starts up; the message looks something like this:
FoxClocks (INFO): DIAGNOSTICS: FoxClocks 2.1.80 (tz database 2007f) / Firefox 2.0.0.4 (en-GB) on WINNT (en-CA). Auto-update enabled. Local time Sun Jun 24 2007 21:55:51 GMT-0400 (Eastern Daylight Time); offset 240 mins
Since old messages are removed from the Error Console, you may need to restart the application to see this message. If FoxClocks has detected an error condition you will also see messages something like:
FoxClocks: function(): something unpleasant has happened, next to a yellow warning triangle, or
FoxClocks: function(): something terrible has happened, next to a red error circle.
If the parameter javascript.options.showInConsole, accessed via about:config, is ‘true’ the Error Console will also display any warnings/errors caused by, rather than detected by, FoxClocks. These messages will not start with the word ‘FoxClocks’, but will contain ‘FoxClocks’ somewhere in the message. The FoxClocks diagnostic message described above, and all FoxClocks-related warnings and errors are very useful for isolating FoxClocks issues. It is possible to enable verbose logging and to log directly to a file,but typically this isn’t needed; please contact us if you think this is necessary.
To save your current FoxClocks settings to a file, choose ‘Export settings…’ from the ‘File’ menu in the main FoxClocks window.