Birthday Bar Background

How to UseBB_Documentation.html
History Version_History/Version_History.html
Bar Home Birthday_Bar.html

History

Birthday Bar is the descendant of an AppleScript® I wrote in college because I grew tired of wishing my friends belated birthdays every year.  The original AppleScript display was simply a folder name that I would automatically keep updated with the next upcoming birthday.  The folder would sit along the bottom of my screen as a pop-up folder (a feature of OS 9 that I still miss), text-to-speech would mispronounce my friend’s name on the day of their birthday, and the next day the folder name would update to show me the next upcoming birthday.

OS X did away with pop-up folders, so the updated folder name sat near the bottom of my desktop, with an invisible folder icon, always keeping me up to date.

As it turns out my friends are like me.  They also have trouble remembering birthdays.  Over the years I have had many requests for a copy of the AppleScript but I was always uncomfortable giving it out because of the burdensome steps required to set up and use my kludgy little script.  The project, however, seemed a great way to get my feet wet in Objective-C™ and Cocoa® programming—hence the birth of Birthday Bar.

What It Does

Birthday Bar is designed to be a persistent reminder of upcoming Birthdays, Anniversaries and yearly special events.  At its most basic, Birthday Bar grabs date information from your Address Book and displays upcoming events in a bar along the top or bottom of your screen.  Further, it provides quick links–like a menu item to e-mail the contact–to help manage the upcoming event.  It updates itself automatically when your Address Book changes so that it is always showing the next upcoming birthdays and anniversaries.

Design Goals

  1. •Persistence: Birthday Bar should always be available to the user—something to be glanced at periodically during daily tasks.

  2. •Out-of-the-way: Birthday Bar should not get in the way of the user while they go about their normal tasks on the computer.

  3. •Integration: Birthday Bar should integrate with available technologies to keep the user informed and reminded about upcoming events.