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So, last week I posted about releasing a BBC Now Next extension for Google Chrome. I updated it a few days later, adding the rest of the information received from the BBC Programmes upcoming feed.

So, before I’m finally done with this, I though I’d write about a final feature I added, Reminders. Download the extension here.

Highlighted are all the active reminders

Having Now, Next as well as Later (the next few shows upcoming) is great, but I thought it would be so much better if you could add a reminder on these upcoming shows and be notified when they are about to start. With Chrome’s extensions API you have access to the icon that activates your extension, so you can not only redraw or animate that, you can also set a label, much like Mac and iPhone apps that display a number representing unread email etc.

So my implementation works like this. When the Now Next window is open you will see that there is a little clock icon next to any upcoming shows. If you hover your mouse over this icon you will see a crafty bit of CSS using transforms that animates the clock to make it easier to see. Clicking on this starts the reminder timer. That’s it for setting the reminder. Oh and you can cancel any reminder by clicking on it again.

Once the timer/s are running you can then carry on using the browser as normal. The timers will just remain running whilst you have the your browser open. You can also click on the now next icon, to see any active timers running.

Ok, now the important bit. What happens when the timer ends. So what first happens is the extension icon will spin 5 times to hopefully catch your eye. After the spinning ends, the icon will then contain a label which tells you how many finished reminders. This number will remain until you click on the extension icon again.

See how many reminder have finished

Oh, and when you do click on the icon, you will see that the reminders that finished will be highlighted and pulsing.

These reminders have been mocked up hence their position

So, I hope you like this little addition, and I’d appreciate your feedback.

Now, although I wrote a lot of this on my daily commute, I was also given the chance to work on this whilst at work with the BBC R&D Prototyping team. I ran the idea past them a week or so ago at a standup, and said it would be great learning should we want to build anything else. They trusted me. This makes me happy.

Finally as I said in the previous post, you can download the source for this via my github account.

UPDATE: I added a new feature. Reminders

I like Google Chrome, it’s fast and simple and works as expected. It’s currently my main browser, and with Extensions, it’s likely to remain that way.

An extension is a zipped bundle of files — HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images, and anything else you need — that adds functionality to the Google Chrome browser. Extensions are essentially web pages, and they can use all the APIs that the browser provides to web pages, from XMLHttpRequest to JSON to HTML5 local storage

I use a Mac so extensions have not been available to me, until that is the dev versions of Chrome started incorporating them. I installed it the other day, and thought I’d have a play at creating one. You can build them too, as their dev site is very helpful.

Using my standard use case, I have built an extension that displays BBC stations Now and Next information. Give it a whirl:

• Install BBC Now and Next Chrome extension

You can see what it looks like in action below.

It uses feeds from BBC Programmes, the upcoming feed and the lesser know service feed. So you install it, and choose the stations you are interested in. You then get to see what is on now and next when you click the BBC icon that appears in the browser bar. the results are clickable. You can click on the network icons to listen or watch live. You can click on the show images or heading to go to that shows programme page.

Oh, and if you’re interested in the code, it on available via my Github account.

Enjoy!