In addition to letting you know about important occasions when you turn on your Mac, you can also be reminded of them shortly before they start with a popup window and optionally a sound.
How to Get an Alert
First of all, you must select both a Start time and an Alert time in the Occasion window. At present, pop-up alerts are not available for occasions with no specific time. It is assumed that being reminded about them when you turn on your Mac is enough (this may change in the future due to popular demand.)
Also, the occasion's Type must specifically allow Alert windows or sounds. Trivia is an example of a Type that does not. There are also master switches in Preferences to turn off alert windows and sounds.
You actually get two alerts for each occasion: one at the Alert time, and a second at the exact Start time. You can turn off the second alert in Preferences.
the Pop-Up Alert Hot Key
This is a keyboard combination to display the next scheduled alert. The default combination is COMMAND-OPTION-` (backquote) which is a tad strange but should not conflict with any existing combination. You should select a more convienient Hot Key in the Pop-Up Alerts Preferences.
Mac Plus Users: As it happens, System 7 uses this same sequence to terminate the current application (there is no ESC key on old keyboards.) You must select a different hot key.
The Hot Key must use the COMMAND key, and you can add the SHIFT, OPTION and CONTROL modifier keys as well. Pick something unusual since it is intercepted by "Remember?" whenever you press it.
Press the Hot Key a second time to hide the Alert window.
What Happens at Alert Time
the Pop-Up Alert Sound
Thw Alert sound for the occasion's Type is played at Alert time. You can assign a different sound for each Type.
The alert sound is repeated every so often to attract your attention. You can adjust the interval in Preferences.
Spoken Alerts
You can have your alerts spoken by turning on the appropriate Preference, if you have installed Apple's cool speech manager software. The alert window is spoken whenever it appears on the screen, even when you press the Hot Key.
How can you tell if you have speech? Look for the Speech Manager in your Extensions folder.
the Pop-up Alert Window
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The above is a bland black and white rendition of an alert window. On color Macs it has a lovely 3-D effect. You can customize the appearance and placement of the alert window (see the Pop-Up Alerts Preference set.)
The top line is the current date and time. The bottom is the start time and description for the occasion that triggered the alert, or the next alert when you press the hot key.
The icon at the left is animated to attract your attention and uses the color of the Type of the occasion.
Click on the icon for a menu of useful commands:
- Go Away
Hide the alert window. You can also hide it by clicking on the window or pressing the Hot Key.
- "Remember?" DA
Open the desk accessory (uses the special Alert window set if you saved one.)
- Edit
Launch the desk accessory and open an Occasion window so you can change this occasion.
- New
Launch the desk accessory with a new Occasion window, pre-set to today's date and time.
- Anything of Interest?
Perform the startup check for important occasions.
NOTE: Each item has a COMMAND key shortcut. Press the same modifier keys (COMMAND/SHIFT/OPTION/CONTROL) used for your Hot Key, then press the letter for the shortcut. This is intentional to avoid conflicts with application shortcuts.
Special Messages
You may see a few special messages in the alert window:
- Nothing Happening Today or Tomorrow.
There are no alert occasions for the next two days. That is the limit for pop-up alerts.
- You've turned off alerts.
You disabled pop-up alerts in Preferences.
- No occasion files.
Your active occasion file list is empty (see Managing Occasion Files .)
- Can't access "Remember?'s Settings."
The settings file is missing or damaged. Restart to see if the problem disappears. Try restoring your settings file from the last backup copy (you *did* make a backup, right?) This may appear momentarily during upgrades from previous versions. It should go away when you access the new desk accessory and Restart.
You may also see a message that reads "(Mac error code -X)". The number given is a standard Mac error code. The alert may or may not be correct. Try accessing the desk accessory. It may give you a better description of the problem.
Screen Savers
Their goal in life is to blank the screen to keep the image from getting burned into the phosphorus (Yeah, sure. And toasters really do fly.) They also prevent applications from drawing on the screen while it is blanked.
Before an Alert appears, I attempt to unblank the screen if a saver is active. The saver may kick in again later on and hide the alert. You should still hear the alert sound and the window will be drawn when you deactivate the saver by moving the mouse or hitting a key.
Requires Remember? Extension
Pop-up alert features are provided by Remember? Extension.
