StripClock

The story

StripClock began life in 2001 as a small, strange clock for the Palm OS handhelds of the era. Instead of hands or plain digits, it showed time as a pair of vertical strips that could be zoomed in and out independently — tap or drag higher to zoom in, lower to zoom out. One strip could track something as coarse as the days of the week, while the other tracked something as fine as individual seconds, both scrolling past a fixed "now" line in the middle of the screen.

It was written by Fraser McCrossan, with icons and graphics by M. Lisa Paulaharju, and released as free software under the GNU General Public License (GPL v2 or later) — the kind of small, personal utility that quietly outlives the platform it was built for.

Original StripClock screen on Palm OS — This is the original screen of StripClock, running on a Palm OS handheld.

The porting

Palm OS has been gone for a long time, and so had any easy way to run StripClock. This Android port was made by Vincent Liopard., rebuilding the original strip-and-zoom concept as a modern Android app: a custom-drawn view driven by the device's own frame clock, persistent zoom levels per strip, and a light/dark color scheme toggled with a tap on the toolbar — the same spirit as the original, adapted to a very different screen and a very different operating system two decades later.

StripClock Android port, light mode — The Android port in light mode.

StripClock Android port, dark mode — The Android port in dark mode, toggled from the toolbar.

Credits

Original concept and code: Fraser McCrossan (2001–2002), joat.ca

Original icons and graphics: M. Lisa Paulaharju (2001)

Android porting: Vincent Liopard. (2026)

License

Strip Clock - show a bizarre clock of time strips in various resolutions Copyright (C) 2002 Fraser McCrossan This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.