IN AN increasingly busy life, time management has become essential for an individual. And, as in all other facets of life, software come to the rescue and to help manage tasks, appointments, events and other chores of a typical work routine. One free solution is RainLender, whose range of options and visual aesthetics makes it stand apart from the rest.
The first step is to install the program. After installation, three windows appear on the desktop: the calendar, the ‘to-do’ list and the event list. By default, these icons appear on the top left corner. Drag these icons to the right hand side, since most of the system default icons are present at the top left corner of the desktop.
RainLender allows you to make the windows transparent and set its visibility. Hovering the mouse over semi-transparent window makes it opaque, that is, ready for use.
In order to do that, right-click on RainLender’s system tray icon (showing the date) and select Config. In General tab, slide the transparency control towards left, ensuring that the window remains visible. In the Layout tab, select OnTop under Position frame.
Next, check ‘Opaque on mouse over’ under Other Settings frame. Now watch the shadowy windows as you work around with your documents. Transparency ensures that RainLender’s ‘always on top’ option is not a nag.
Calendar
The interface shows the number of the year against each week row, along with the year at bottom left. Changing the month and year is made easy by shortcut keys. As calendar window becomes opaque, click inside it once and press Right or Left arrow key to go forward or backwards month-wise, or press Up and Down to go to next and previous years respectively.
Today’s date is shown with a red circle over date, and events defined for a particular day are indicated with distinct icons. For example, a travel event is shown with an airplane, phone or call event with a telephone and so on. This gives a quick snapshot of activities planned.
The attachment of events on calendar dates can be utilized by double-clicking a date which results in the appearance of a list of events, which in turn can be clicked to open Edit Event window. Also, you can double-click a date to enter a corresponding event.
Calendar display is not restricted to one month at a time. To change the default one-month display, right click in Calendar (or the System Tray icon), select Config, go to Layout tab and under Multiple Calendar section, increase the number of months shown horizontally or vertically from 1 to a desired value.
Double-click the window caption “To Do” or click in an empty window space to open the “To Do” list. Right-clicking inside the To Do window and selecting Edit To Do List is another way of accessing this option.
In the first tab, you can enter tasks and in the third tab notes that do not appear in To Do list can be entered. Second tab holds tasks marked as ‘Done’. Once the tasks are added, they appear in To Do window, and double-clicking a particular task shows the status marking options.
Select ‘Check Item’ to make it strike through, and you may later select ‘Mark all checked as done’ or alternatively select ‘Mark as done’ status which sends the task in the Done tab. Once a task is in Done tab, you can always select Undo to send it back to the To Do list or permanently delete the task.
Events
Double-click the Events window to open up Edit Event where you can type a message header and body, along with the start date, time and duration. Duration marking is useful as it results in distinct marking over the calendar along with an icon depending upon the selected profile.
An alarm option is also there. You can also set recurring events which can increase the number of events. To reduce the list, right-click the Events window, select Config, go to Layout tab and enter the number of days in ‘Event list window’ section to restrict the number of events displayed accordingly. The Event list displays events along with its category icon which makes it easy to identify what types of events are due.
If at any time, a window is not visible, right-click the system tray icon, select Windows > Calendar > Visible, similarly for To Do and Event List. Explore the Config tabs to see the range of available options, including Skins menu. Edit Current Skin option gives you access to settings laid out in 11 tabs through which even minutest details with regard to colour, font and position of information can be tweaked. — NDA
