Countdown Timer in milliseconds or seconds.

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Hi All,

I am using visual basic 2010 on .net framework 4 and im have an issuing creating a simple count down timer. i was wondering if anyone new the simplist method to create a countdown timer in milliseconds or seconds using a timer control and intervals.

I currently have a form with 1 textbox and 1 timer control. i want the textbox display a countdown in milliseconds from interval of 300000 (5mins).

Any help or direction would be helpful.

Cheers Tom

Posted 12-Jun-11 2:02am

SIFNOk

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Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-12T09:39:00

I agree with John about his evaluation of thread vs timer.
See also my past answer:
Timer Threading in C#[^]

If you really need a timer, any of the other types of Timer:
System.Threading.Timer or System.Timers.Timer, see:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.threading.timer.aspx[^],
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.timers.timer.aspx[^].

However, you cannot call anything on UI from the timer's callback delegate or event handler. Instead, you need to call the method Invoke or BeginInvoke of System.Windows.Threading.Dispatcher (both Forms or WPF) or System.Windows.Forms.Control (Forms only).

For detailed explanations of the invocation and code samples, please see my past answers:
Control.Invoke() vs. Control.BeginInvoke()[^],
Problem with Treeview Scanner And MD5[^].

—SA

#realJSOP · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-12T02:07:00

Solution 1

Don't use the Winforms Timer control. Use System.Timers.Timer instead. Of course, if it were me, I'd use a thread and a delegate instead of ANY Timer object because

0) You have more control

1) The Windows Timer even is the lowest priority message in Windows and on a busy system, it's NOT guaranteed to be processed by the OS. A thread is a better choice.

Posted 12-Jun-11 2:07am

#realJSOP

Comments

SIFNOk 12-Jun-11 8:14am

Thanks John For Your Reply, I Appericate your help!

i have read that timers are very unreliable for scheduling and timer purposes and that system.threading is a better method...but my vb.net skills are not best so my knowledge on implementing threading soo not too good....im have alook on MSDN now about system.thread but if you nay information of other references that could help me would be great :)

but would i still be able to achieve a count down timer using a timer control?

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-Jun-11 15:29pm

At ***any level of skills* threads are easier to implement!
--SA

Sergey Alexandrovich Kryukov 12-Jun-11 15:45pm

Agree, my 5.
However, in case the timer is still needed (it can be needed in rare cases), I put a detailed answer, please see.
--SA