You can do something similar to this... this is just a timer though that does something every X seconds.

1. long lastTime = 0;
2. void setup() {
3.   lastTime = millis();
4. }
5. void draw() {
6.   if ( millis() - lastTime > 5000 ) {
7.     println( "do things every 5 seconds" );
8.     lastTime = millis();
9.   }
10. }

Delay was a bad thing because it halted the whole program, including the GUI - which means that buttons etc would stop to react and the user would think the program had crashed (or worse).

or you can make your own like this:

delay()  is back since 2.0a5.

Yes, but it is still a bad idea to use it, because it halts your program which becomes unresponsive until delay() is finished.

(BTW, you answer to a one year old thread! Not sure of your point.)