That tiny app was wonderful in a bunch of ways, but best of all was the ease with which the clock display could be changed to have bigger text.
This will seem trivial (& attract some snarkiness I'm sure) - but here goes:
Custom animated cursors.
I had the galloping horse & running monopoly dog cursors that were always good to see.
Some sort of simple collection of system sound alerts that might even make use of .WAV (gulp !!) files.
A weather display applet that actually WORKS !!!
The panel one is broken & quite useless - and even if there was a good one that could pop up alerts from an open browser (Vivaldi for example) that would be very helpful now that winter has arrived here.
There are other seemingly trivial & unimportant things which could make this otherwise superb distro more of a comfort, and I'll stop now just to see if any helpful thoughts are posted in reply here.
Not especially helpful or thoughtful, I am afraid, I am well aware that desktop interface details however negligible for me can be very important for another person and vice versa. Sometimes I wonder why such the tiny/unimportant (on the absolute scale) details have sent me distro-hopping for years.
I use Cairo Dock. Its clock applet allows font overriding. And on click it shows calendar. I like it.
I use 'Classic' desktop theme. I set upper panel to hide automatically and do not use it often. And I delete lower panel with taskbar. Due to 16:9 screen form factor I prefer to have Cairo Dock vertical bar with static launchers, clock, keyboard and network indicators on the left side and another vertical bar with 'taskbar' area on the right of my screen.
Have you tried just replacing the currently used icon (in the theme's actual directory) with your preferred animated icon? If the theme accepts PNG, it will likely work. If it only accepts SVG (I see a trend in that direction), it may not be possible.
Colour me amazed - such great & helpful replies - Thanks Folks !!
@ugnvs:
I did get Cairo-dock & it is a better clock display for me old eyes, but...
Trying different settings couldn't quite get it how I'd want it.
It dominates an entire row rather than just its own width & I saw no way to get it to NOT re-display my active s/w - which is just too silly !!
Also, its weather applet refuses to work for me.
As to the other suggested things...
The animated cursors (not icons) I really enjoyed are .ANI files rather than SVG or PNG files.
I do limit myself to just ONE s/w experiment until I've made several successful startups without any complications - so that nifty horse cursor & sound stuff will be on standby until I'm sure that Cairo-dock hasn't messed anything up.
Do I get it right that you do not want integrated taskbar area in the dock? If yes, then right click on the dock, select Cairo-Dock > Configure menu. Since then select Advanced Mode in the left bottom corner of the configuration dialogue screen and deselect Taskbar item in Behaviour section.
As to clocks... There is a lot of items to try them out
ugnvs@pc:~$ apt list *clock* | grep -v 'lib\|golang'
WARNING: apt does not have a stable CLI interface. Use with caution in scripts.
Listing...
aclock.app/jammy 0.4.0-2build4 amd64
asclock-themes/jammy,jammy 2.0.12-33 all
asclock/jammy 2.0.12-33 amd64
binclock/jammy 1.5-11 amd64
budgie-clockworks-applet/jammy-updates,jammy-updates,jammy-security,jammy-security 1.4.0-1ubuntu3.1 all
budgie-fuzzyclock-applet/jammy-updates,jammy-security 1.4.0-1ubuntu3.1 amd64
buici-clock/jammy 0.4.9.4+nmu1 amd64
cairo-dock-clock-plug-in/jammy,now 3.4.1+git20201022.a0d3415c-1build1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
dclock/jammy 2.2.2-13 amd64
fake-hwclock/jammy,jammy 0.12 all
fdclock/jammy 0.1.0+git.20060122-0ubuntu4 amd64
gnome-clocks/jammy,now 41.0-2 amd64 [installed,automatic]
gworldclock/jammy 1.4.4-11 amd64
iputils-clockdiff/jammy 3:20211215-1 amd64
jack-midi-clock/jammy 0.4.3-1 amd64
osdclock/jammy 0.5-25 amd64
rovclock/jammy 0.6e-7build1 amd64
ruby-clockwork/jammy,jammy 2.0.4-2 all
sunclock-maps/jammy,jammy 3.57-11 all
sunclock/jammy 3.57-11 amd64
tty-clock/jammy 2.3-1build1 amd64
twclock/jammy 3.5-1 amd64
wmcalclock/jammy 1.25-18 amd64
wmclock/jammy 1.0.16-2 amd64
wmclockmon/jammy 0.8.1-5 amd64
wmmoonclock/jammy 1.30-2 amd64
xarclock/jammy 1.0-17 amd64
xdaliclock/jammy 2.44+debian-2 amd64
ugnvs@pc:~$
Thanks Again & Again Uvgns !!
I did manage to get that done - but frankly Cairo is a desktop space hog & it uses maybe 15% rather than just the little bit that I think it should.
Just rename the *.apng file to *.png before dropping it into place.
SVG files, by definition, have no "internal" or "embedded" animation capabilities. All animation is done via application of CSS styling, which I believe most themes are not coded to address (for cursors).
Some cursor themes do have code logic to handle animation. You could check out what is available on "MATElook.org".
