Better calendar views

Implement a week view like the one at NY Mag

• installable as an alternative view
• Trey Beck (merckx) has already done this and is committing to a branch.

Integrate week and day views from Dateable

• Calvin HP already started this at the Naples sprint.

Comparators: calendars with interesting user interfaces

In alphabetical order…

[undefined] web based CalDAV client

• announced informally in  <irc://irc.freenode.net/#calendarserver>
  
• Graham Perrin will search his Colloquy log of that channel, hopefully identify the developer(s)
  
• opportunities for co-development?
  
• …
  

Agenda - New York Magazine Events Calendar

• http://nymag.com/agenda/

Apple iCal 2 (~Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger)

• the distinction between a) subscriptions, b) local published calendars and c) local unpublished calendars was clear enough
  
• subscriptions bore refresh icons
• publications bore transmit icons
  
• user defined groups were an asset
• searches worked
  
• …
  

Apple iCal 3 (~Mac OS X 10.5, Leopard)

• incredibly: the search box fails to find matching events!
• within the calendar list at left hand side: forced separation (calendars | subscriptions) may be friendly to some users
• however: this novelty annoyingly breaks all of the many calendar groups that I had created in iCal 2
• IMHO the separation/breakage should be an option, not enforced
  
• all-day events are too easily overlooked in Day and Week views
• need to review representations of non-all-day events that span more than one day (of the week)
• at head of window: combined view selection + time navigation is an improvement
• … 

Apple Wiki Server in Mac OS X Server 10.5

• <http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/features/wikis.html>
• shared calendars
• interactions with Apple iCal Server (implementation of Darwin Calendar Server) to be determined
• Graham Perrin aims to experiment/learn, although this may not occur within the bounds of the sprint
  
• critically: spanning multiple products, a thread in Apple Discussions exemplifies the richness and flexibility that may be expected by end-users and service administrators
  
• …
  

Chandler Hub

• https://hub.chandlerproject.org/
• …
  

Google calendar

• (Suggested by lots of people)

• Easy tabbing between day, week and month views
• …
  

Oregon State University Events calendar

• http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/today/day/osu/

Likes

• Easy to work out how to look at events in a particular category (music or whatever)
  
• "select all" and "unselect all" links make it quick to filter events
  
• (AJAX / KSS would make it even easier)
• "Continued" notation indicates events that span more than one day
• "all day" events are listed at the top of a given day
  
• Easy to see start and end times, location, and event cateogry
• …
  

Dislikes

• Orange color scheme!
  
• Particularly orange headings (I thought they were links).
  
• I had to work out that links were the orange underlined things... except for the links in the box at top left ("today", "this week" and "this month" are links but not underlined)
  
• Not immediately obvious how to view events in particular periods in the past or the future
  
• (say, August 2008, or week commencing April 21, 2008?)
• "Related calendars" section. Suggests this is not showing all University events
  
• (silo-based site construction...?)
  
• …
  

SchoolTool

• http://schooltool.org/
  
• https://launchpad.net/schooltool
• a critique is included in this December 2005 presentation;
  
• the few UI problems are highlighted at slides 17—23
• if the time zone that's preferred in iCal is (logically) matched in preferences for SchoolTool, then start and end times may be misrepresented

• for some reason (I'm not inclined to learn why) it's more reliable for the SchoolTool end user (not the service administrator) to ignore their local time zone; to prefer UTC
  
• events that span more than one day (of the week) are/were sometimes misrepresented, sometimes invisible?
• new SchoolTool 2008 packages are available
  
• Graham Perrin hasn't tried them yet, but aims to do so

• …
  

tvtv.co.uk

• http://www.tvtv.co.uk/
  
• focus on navigation of date and time
• ignore other TV-related aspects of the site
  
• click a weekday heading, then collapse/expand parts of the day
• et cetera; what's expected from a click is rarely/never ambiguous
• …
  

VirginiaTech Event Calendar

• http://www.calendar.vt.edu/ (suggested by catherine-w)

Likes:

• Simple tabs to move between day view, week view and month view
• Within day, week and month, events are listed in order of start time
• In Week and month view, dates are hyperlinks that let you jump to a particular day
• …
  

Dislikes

• "Filter events" interface is clumsy
• http://events.cmich.edu/ is better: doesn't require a separate click through, although this could also be improved with AJAX
• so that as soon as you tick a box it selects the relevant subset of events
• …
  

Possible improvements

• Some kind of stronger visual indication (e.g. small icon?) as to the type of event
• Better selection of date ranges
• …