Calendar View Mock-Up

[Christian Jansen]

Hi,
I've created a (live) HTML-mockup [1] to illustrate the look & feel
tab-box based on the proposals in [2].

To start the demo: Click the "Calendar" Tab.

Depending on the view, the toolbar should also change its content, but I
left this out for this demo.

As always, feedback is welcome.

Regards,
Christian

[1] http://cjansen.com/lightning-demo/accordion.htm
[2]
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Improving_the_Calendar_Views#Simon.27s_.28sipaq.29_approach

[Max Spicer]

I definitely like the idea of being able to quickly show and hide the
calendar overview, but at the same time would still like the option to
keep the calendar overview displayed at the same time time as the mail
folders. Will it still be possible to manually resize the elements in
the tab box, as is now possible with the current layout?

Max

[Simon Paquet]

Max Spicer wrote:

> I definitely like the idea of being able to quickly show and hide the
> calendar overview, but at the same time would still like the option to
> keep the calendar overview displayed at the same time time as the mail
> folders. Will it still be possible to manually resize the elements in
> the tab box, as is now possible with the current layout?

I don't think that it should be possible.

[Philip Reames]

Why not? Why should we not let the user customize things the way they want?

Philip Reames

[Christian Jansen]

Max Spicer schrieb:

> I definitely like the idea of being able to quickly show and hide the
> calendar overview, but at the same time would still like the option to
> keep the calendar overview displayed at the same time time as the mail
> folders. Will it still be possible to manually resize the elements in
> the tab box, as is now possible with the current layout?

From my point of view this is an interesting option.
Maybe this is something which could be switched off by default, but
could be enabled via the View menu, or via an preferences option.

By default I'd like to have the tab-boxes as clean and "uncluttered" as
possible.

-Christian

[Stephan Hennig]

Christian Jansen schrieb:

> Hi,
> I've created a (live) HTML-mockup [1] to illustrate the look & feel
> tab-box based on the proposals in [2].
>
> To start the demo: Click the "Calendar" Tab.
>
> Depending on the view, the toolbar should also change its content, but I
> left this out for this demo.
>
> As always, feedback is welcome.

Taking a look at, e.g., the calendar while mail view is open and then
returning to mail view needs to move nearly twice the total screen
height, which is _very_ unergonomic with today's screen resolutions.

With portrait resolutions the situation becomes even worse. After
putting the OS's toolbar at the top of the screen you only rarely move
the mouse cursor the very long way down into the lower half of the screen.

I'd suggest traditional horizontal tabs to switch between different
views. Vertical tabs might serve as well. In general, to cycle between
views tabs should

(i) be positioned close to another,

(ii) be large enough (in both dimensions) to distinguish them easily
with the mouse cursor.

Item (ii) is no problem with the current mockup. But (i) is.

Best regards,
Stephan Hennig

[Christian Jansen]

Thanks for your feedback.

Stephan Hennig schrieb:

> Christian Jansen schrieb:
>> Hi,
>> I've created a (live) HTML-mockup [1] to illustrate the look & feel
>> tab-box based on the proposals in [2].
>>
>> To start the demo: Click the "Calendar" Tab.
>>
>> Depending on the view, the toolbar should also change its content, but I
>> left this out for this demo.
>>
>> As always, feedback is welcome.
>
> Taking a look at, e.g., the calendar while mail view is open and then
> returning to mail view needs to move nearly twice the total screen
> height, which is _very_ unergonomic with today's screen resolutions.
>

This is a valid point. I personally tend to have a button/tab like
solution, without the "moving" effect. I wanted to have feedback on that
"moving" stuff, because lots of apps are using this.

> With portrait resolutions the situation becomes even worse. After
> putting the OS's toolbar at the top of the screen you only rarely move
> the mouse cursor the very long way down into the lower half of the screen.
>

> I'd suggest traditional horizontal tabs to switch between different
> views. Vertical tabs might serve as well. In general, to cycle between
> views tabs should

Having tabs beneath to each other is another interesting option.

+----------------------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------+
| T O O L B A R |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
|_/__Mail______/ Calendar \_______________________________|
| | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri |
| March 2006 |-------------------------------------------|
| 3 4 5 | 8 | | | | | |
| 1 2 3 4 5 | | | | | | |
| 1 2 3 4 5 | 9 | ### | | | | |
| 1 2 3 4 5 | | ### | ### | | | |
| 1 2 3 | 10| | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| My Calendars | 11| | | | | |
| Private | | | | | | |
| Home | 12| | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
+----------------------------------------------------------+
+----------------------------------------------------------+

Regards,
Christian

[Clint Talbert]

Christian Jansen wrote:
> Stephan Hennig schrieb:

>> Taking a look at, e.g., the calendar while mail view is open and then
>> returning to mail view needs to move nearly twice the total screen
>> height, which is _very_ unergonomic with today's screen resolutions.
>>
>
> This is a valid point. I personally tend to have a button/tab like
> solution, without the "moving" effect. I wanted to have feedback on that
> "moving" stuff, because lots of apps are using this.

I rather thought that the animation effect was nice, but I can see that
you would be moving the mouse a long way. Additionally, it might be one
of those glitzy features that are nice at first and annoying as you use
the product more, so I also support having a "non-moving" option.
Personally, I would tend to use keystrokes to switch between the tabs
and not deal with the mouse at all.

>
>> I'd suggest traditional horizontal tabs to switch between different
>> views. Vertical tabs might serve as well. In general, to cycle between
>> views tabs should

For reasons we've hashed out before (vertical screen space etc), I don't
really like the horizontal tab option. I think this vertical tab
solution is intuitive and a good compromise.

Another question: do you envision that the user would be able to drag an
item onto the tab, cause a switch and drop that item onto the new view?
For example, how would dragging an email to a specific day on the
calendar work with this proposal?

I appreciate (and love) the uncluttered nature of these views, but we
will need a good solution to be able to show some amount of calendar
information while in the mail view and some amount of mail information
in the calendar view in order to satisfy many of the users. I'd be
interested to know if you have ideas about that w.r.t. this view proposal.

However, I believe that the proper balance of calendar information in
the mail view and vice versa is largely up to user taste. I think we
need to focus on creating a simple, clean UI that solves 80-90% of our
target user base while leaving enough customizablility and hooks for
future extension and expansion.

That's my two cents.

Clint

[petenz]

This is a good point - once drag and drop arrives as a feature this will
be a concern. If drag and drop were functioning now, as the GUI is
currently, with the mini-calendar in view all the time, if I get an
email now, for something far in the future, I can click the mini
calendar forward to the appropriate month and then drag and drop to
initiate the Event/Task creation dialogue. Thus saving some time by
negating the need to create the event through D&D and then change/adjust
it's time later.

Maybe the 'Calendar' tab could be the lowest of the three tabs, and the
mini calendar (alone, without the 'My Calendars' display) could
always be exposed at lower left of the screen? Or at least the user
could be able to choose this as an option?