Feedback on Calendar
Kenneth Pardue
I'm learning XML for work so hopefully I'll be able to help out even
more in the near future.
Here's my feedback for minor changes. Please be noted that I'm not
trying to be negative or step on anyone's toes, just contributing to a
feedback discussion:
- The day view is looking great with the transition between day and
night graphic on there, but most calendar software I've seen shows the
time from 8am to 5 pm on the calendar, and if anything is before or
after those times are added to the top or bottom of the calendar. I
promise I'm not going to have many appointments at 1am. ;-) Regardless,
would there be any way at all to squeeze the size of the day view to
where it would fit on one screen without scrolling? Scrolling is a big
turn off for many people, myself included, especially when it comes down
to looking at my daily appts. for at a glance.
- This is from a superficial point of view, but the colors are different
and somehow more feminine from the Mozilla Modern. Is calendar going to
be themable? I actually almost like the look 'n feel of Calendar more
than Mozilla Modern, it has a little more bounce and isn't as drab.
- Let's look at screen real-estate (I'm talking Month View at 1024x768
here)... Compared with Outlook, the unfortunate standard calendar for
most, the window for the events is about the same size (or can be with a
little jerk of the pane). Outlook offers approx 800x600, and Moz Cal
827x560. The only reason it's different I think is that Calendar
displays the month and year so big at the top. This might be able to be
reduced. That's actually one of the big complaints I have about Outlook
is that it's difficult to tell what month you're in. The size of a
"day" in the month view in Moz Calendar is 112x75. In Outlook it is
132x115. That's a pretty big gain in Outlook, and you can really tell
it when you are looking at a day that has more than one entry. Text
size for events is about the same in both, maybe a little smaller in
MozCal, which is nice. The numbers in MozCal appear to be about one
pixel bigger than they are in Outlook, though. One thing I do like
better about the Outlook is that events with a set time will display
that time first, and then the first few words of the event. For
example, "4:45 pm Get a haircut at". MozCal doesn't do this, instead
having a pink box around the event.
- As far as the dialogues go, I'm afraid they suffer the same fate as
the rest of Mozilla and look either unproportioned or, well, 'sloppy.'
I wish I could say more, but it's one of those things that just doesn't
"feel" right. A few specifics below:
-The Recurrence section should have the options of Daily, Weekly,
Monthly, or Yearly as radio buttons and not a drop down menu.
-There's way too much technical information when the FTP calendar upload
fails. I don't need to know all that really, unless I specifically ask
for it (speaking of which, I have yet to be able to upload a calendar to
an FTP site).
-The New Event dialogue looks beautiful. The only problem I have with
it is where you click the box to choose your time. For me at least, it
took some staring at it to figure out that the top was the hour and the
bottom was the minutes. Between that and the big, huge "MORE" and
"LESS" button, whew! Would it be difficult to just let me type in the
event's time, like I can the date? I think it to be a bit redundant
having it list every minute from 0 to 60. It would also be nice if it
would assume that the appointment ends half an hour after it starts,
unless or until I have specified otherwise.
-The scroll wheel should be active on the month view... scrolling up
should make me move forward a month, and down should move me back a month.
-I must be missing something, but under the Calendars section in the
left pane, I can't figure out how to delete a calendar. It should be an
option in the right click menu.
-I think it would be important to have either in addition to or instead
of the Calendars pane a tab that would be "Memo" or "To Do" to better
coincide with the Palm when and if synchronization is implemented. I
would LOVE to have a list of my Memos.
-The dialogues for the wizard could be cleaned up. Again, nothing I can
put my finger on. Except the excruciatingly long bar that goes across
the "Import Events" that says Find a File. Couldn't the size of this
dialogue be reduced?
-I'm assuming that the other issues with this dialogue will be resolved.
If after entering one of the options I hit the Back button, I can no
longer click 'Next' to go back into any of the options. The dialogue
for publishing a calendar really shouldn't have a scrollbar where it is.
If a person should have to scroll, it should be within the window
with all the calendar's listed.
These are just my takes on the matter. Again, hope I haven't stepped on
anyone's toes and I'm sorry if I can't contribute that much at this
point. I'd love to make an effort but I'm afraid with knowing as little
as I do at this point about XML I'd make things worse instead of better.
Best regards,
Kenneth
HawkEye
<snip>
- The day view is looking great with the transition between day and night graphic on there, but most calendar software I've seen shows the time from 8am to 5 pm on the calendar, and if anything is before or after those times are added to the top or bottom of the calendar. I promise I'm not going to have many appointments at 1am. ;-) Regardless, would there be any way at all to squeeze the size of the day view to where it would fit on one screen without scrolling?
This is commonly requested from what I have seen on this newsgroup. i vaguely remember someone saying it was being looked at yes/no?? I hope so anyway I'd like this feature too.
<snip>
Is calendar going to be themable?
Some themes already work including my fav Sky Pilot Classic :-)
<snip>
Would it be difficult to just let me type in the event's time, like I can the date? I think it to be a bit redundant having it list every minute from 0 to 60. It would also be nice if it would assume that the appointment ends half an hour after it starts, unless or until I have specified otherwise.
Personally I like the minutes flexability. Much better than Outlook . As for half hour appointments maybe a setting to change the default?
<snip>
-I must be missing something, but under the Calendars section in the left pane, I can't figure out how to delete a calendar. It should be an option in the right click menu.
There was an earlier post in this group about this. The code is currently disabled as there is a bug in it. Manually binning them isn't too arduous.
I'm no expert on xml either so I'm reduced to passing 'comments' on other peoples hard work. All I can say os keep it up folks, you're doing well.
Regards
Neil
"This message posted with the aid of
Mozilla. The best Internet Software
no money can buy!"
(Well it is free )
Kenneth Pardue
That's something I forgot to mention... "keek it up folks, you're doing
well." I definitely second that! A little hero worship doesn't hurt
every now and again eh? ;-) Mozilla AND Calendar are fantastic, as is
the work the collective "you" are putting into it.
Samuel Blomqvist
to the next?
I allways get the "error": "your start time is after your endtime" or
something similar when I try to set an event from say Friday 8:00 PM
to Saturday 3:00 AM. And the OK button is grayed out untill I change it.
if I however edit the calenderfile manually with an texteditor I can
enter an even that goes from one evening to the next morning.
/Samuel
Mike Potter
Kenneth Pardue wrote:
> I'm trying to do my part to help test and offer feedback for calendar.
> I'm learning XML for work so hopefully I'll be able to help out even
> more in the near future.
>
> Here's my feedback for minor changes. Please be noted that I'm not
> trying to be negative or step on anyone's toes, just contributing to a
> feedback discussion:
>
> - The day view is looking great with the transition between day and
> night graphic on there, but most calendar software I've seen shows the
> time from 8am to 5 pm on the calendar, and if anything is before or
> after those times are added to the top or bottom of the calendar. I
> promise I'm not going to have many appointments at 1am. ;-) Regardless,
> would there be any way at all to squeeze the size of the day view to
> where it would fit on one screen without scrolling? Scrolling is a big
> turn off for many people, myself included, especially when it comes down
> to looking at my daily appts. for at a glance.
This is a known bug, and probably the most annoying bug in the calendar
program. I have no idea how to fix it: there is no easy way to scroll a
XUL box to a certain item. If you see an example of this being done in
another Mozilla app, let me know.
>
> - This is from a superficial point of view, but the colors are different
> and somehow more feminine from the Mozilla Modern. Is calendar going to
> be themable? I actually almost like the look 'n feel of Calendar more
> than Mozilla Modern, it has a little more bounce and isn't as drab.
>
> - Let's look at screen real-estate (I'm talking Month View at 1024x768
> here)... Compared with Outlook, the unfortunate standard calendar for
> most, the window for the events is about the same size (or can be with a
> little jerk of the pane). Outlook offers approx 800x600, and Moz Cal
> 827x560. The only reason it's different I think is that Calendar
> displays the month and year so big at the top. This might be able to be
> reduced. That's actually one of the big complaints I have about Outlook
> is that it's difficult to tell what month you're in. The size of a
> "day" in the month view in Moz Calendar is 112x75. In Outlook it is
> 132x115. That's a pretty big gain in Outlook, and you can really tell
> it when you are looking at a day that has more than one entry. Text
> size for events is about the same in both, maybe a little smaller in
> MozCal, which is nice. The numbers in MozCal appear to be about one
> pixel bigger than they are in Outlook, though. One thing I do like
> better about the Outlook is that events with a set time will display
> that time first, and then the first few words of the event. For
> example, "4:45 pm Get a haircut at". MozCal doesn't do this, instead
> having a pink box around the event.
File bugs for what you would like to have changed.
>
> - As far as the dialogues go, I'm afraid they suffer the same fate as
> the rest of Mozilla and look either unproportioned or, well, 'sloppy.' I
> wish I could say more, but it's one of those things that just doesn't
> "feel" right. A few specifics below:
>
> -The Recurrence section should have the options of Daily, Weekly,
> Monthly, or Yearly as radio buttons and not a drop down menu.
>
> -There's way too much technical information when the FTP calendar upload
> fails. I don't need to know all that really, unless I specifically ask
> for it (speaking of which, I have yet to be able to upload a calendar to
> an FTP site).
Support for FTP was fixed in the latest builds, maybe you don't have the
latest one. It does work for other people. Give more details on the
error message perhaps?
>
> -The New Event dialogue looks beautiful. The only problem I have with
> it is where you click the box to choose your time. For me at least, it
> took some staring at it to figure out that the top was the hour and the
> bottom was the minutes. Between that and the big, huge "MORE" and
> "LESS" button, whew! Would it be difficult to just let me type in the
> event's time, like I can the date? I think it to be a bit redundant
> having it list every minute from 0 to 60. It would also be nice if it
> would assume that the appointment ends half an hour after it starts,
> unless or until I have specified otherwise.
There is a setting under Edit->Preferences->Calendar that allows you to
specify the default length of new events. If its not respecting that
pref, then please file a bug.
>
> -The scroll wheel should be active on the month view... scrolling up
> should make me move forward a month, and down should move me back a month.
Nice idea.
>
> -I must be missing something, but under the Calendars section in the
> left pane, I can't figure out how to delete a calendar. It should be an
> option in the right click menu.
This isn't available yet. There's a small error in the RDF file when
you delete a calendar. This causes the calendar to crash, so deleting
calendars is disabled, until someone finds a solution to our bug.
>
> -I think it would be important to have either in addition to or instead
> of the Calendars pane a tab that would be "Memo" or "To Do" to better
> coincide with the Palm when and if synchronization is implemented. I
> would LOVE to have a list of my Memos.
The To Do items are listed below the calendars... Are you saying you
would prefer them to be in a tab instead of directly below? Our UI guy
said something about this as well, since its rare that you turn on and
off the calendars, but a lot of people probably use the To Do feature.
>
> -The dialogues for the wizard could be cleaned up. Again, nothing I can
> put my finger on. Except the excruciatingly long bar that goes across
> the "Import Events" that says Find a File. Couldn't the size of this
> dialogue be reduced?
The Wizard is incomplete, and shouldn't be on in the builds. I keep
forgetting to turn it off though.
Mike Lee
> Thanks for the feedback... I've gone through some issues below.
>
> calendar program. I have no idea how to fix it: there is no easy way
> to scroll a XUL box to a certain item. If you see an example of this
> being done in another Mozilla app, let me know.
>
I'm in a hurry but shouldn't window.scroll() or one of it's varient work?
Regards
--
Mike Lee
Website: http://www.exitspace.net/mike
Kenneth Pardue
> Mike Potter wrote:
> > Thanks for the feedback... I've gone through some issues below.
> >
> > This is a known bug, and probably the most annoying bug in the
> > calendar program. I have no idea how to fix it: there is no easy way
> > to scroll a XUL box to a certain item. If you see an example of this
> > being done in another Mozilla app, let me know.
> >
>
> I'm in a hurry but shouldn't window.scroll() or one of it's varient work?
>
> Regards
>
Maybe we're on the same page and I'm missing it here but, I had
something slightly different in mind. I was talking about having the
8-5 show up on the screen, and nothing else appear the other times
unless there's something in its place. I got into Photoshop and threw
together a little graphic to show what I'm talking about:
http://www.taylormadecom.com/test/calconcept.jpg
Of course, that's just a thought. I can certainly see where it would be
handy to have the other hours on the screen, but it should (assuming the
technical limitation can be worked out) start displaying the 8 to 5 area
in a tasteful, visually pleasing manner... must be a way to make that
scrollbar work with it and still look good.
Best,
Kenneth
Eric Belhaire
Don't you think that it could be easy to add a
WorkingDay view (8-18h for example) in addition
to the Day, Week and month view.
I also think that a 5DayWeek view and a
5weeksOf5Days could be useful in addition to the
week and month view. These last views are present
in the Staroffice5.2 Schedule program and allow to
display a maximum of information (like the starting
time of the event in the month view for example).
Mike do you think it could be easily implemented ?
--
Eric Belhaire
Mike Potter
file and then write the JS object for that view. A few hooks into it
and you're all done.
Pretty easy to do. If you're willing to give it a shot, use
calendarWeekView.js and calendarWeekView.xul as your starting point, and
go from there.
Mike
Kenneth Pardue
Mike Potter wrote:
<snip>
>
> This is a known bug, and probably the most annoying bug in the calendar
> program. I have no idea how to fix it: there is no easy way to scroll a
> XUL box to a certain item. If you see an example of this being done in
> another Mozilla app, let me know.
>
<snip>
Mike, just curious... is the Netscape Help file similar to what you're
talking about? I just realized that after searching for a topic, the
help file automatically opens that file and scrolls down to the relevant
subject. Am I oversimplifying things here?
Kenneth
Mike Potter
Using the DOM Inspector, you can see that the right hand side is
implemented as a < browser > element. This allows them to set anchors
in the html content, and then point to them, as they would a URL on the
page.
Using only XUL and JS, that's not possible for the bulletin board that
we use in the day and week view.
It is apparently not a lot of work to get this feature working, but it
requires digging into the C++ code (I don't know where). My knowledge
of C++ is basically non existent.
The current way of collapsing the day view is a good work around, but
not the best solution, in my mind.
If anyone wants to try getting our day view to scroll, please give it a
shot.
Thanks!
Mike