It doesn't work because you are declaring it in the wrong order. And because neither timer nor TIME are valid semantics. Try vecTime...


From MSDN:

Quote:

---

Syntax
Semantics are attached to function parameters like this:

[Parameter Modifiers]
ParameterType ParameterName [: Semantic] [= Initializers]


- List of semantics and their descriptions
- - Red: We do not use
- - Yellow: I'm pretty sure we don't use

- VS INPUT
BINORMAL[n] Binormal
BLENDINDICES[n] Blend indices
BLENDWEIGHT[n] Blend weights
COLOR[n] Diffuse and specular color
NORMAL[n] Normal vector
POSITION[n] Vertex position in object space
POSITIONT Transformed vertex position. POSITIONT tells the runtime that the vertex is transformed and that the vertex shader should not be executed.
PSIZE[n] Point size
TANGENT[n] Tangent - we use texcoord2
TESSFACTOR[n] Tessellation factor
TEXCOORD[n] Texture coordinates

- VS OUTPUT
COLOR[n] Diffuse or specular color.
FOG Vertex fog.
POSITION[n] Position of a vertex in homogenous space. Compute position in screen-space by dividing (x,y,z) by w.
PSIZE Point size.
TEXCOORD[n] Texture coordinates.

- PS INPUT
COLOR[n] Diffuse or specular color.
TEXCOORD[n] Texture coordinates.
VFACE Floating-point scalar that indicates a back-facing primitive.
VPOS (PS_3_0) Contains the current pixel (x,y) location.

- PS OUTPUT
COLOR[n] Ouput color.
DEPTH[n] Output depth.

---

TIME is just another semantic. ex:
float3 vecTime : TIME;

Then later in your shader you would reference TIME, NOT vecTime

...
Out.Tex = In.Tex * TIME.w;
...

Not sure what that above line would actually do, but it's just an example