UI suggestions

[lukew...@gmail.com]

Hey,

Just a couple of suggestions for improvements to the UI if you'd like
to hear them;

-Currently you have alt tags displaying the title data of events on
mouse over. It'd be cool if you could have a proper box appear on mouse
over with all the information in, including description. Similarly when
I click on an event I am given the 'Edit Event' box which contains all
the information in editable, form like display-- it just looks very
very clinical and is quite hard to decipher. If on-click a box came up
with all the info easily readable in it, clear fonts, in a nice yellow
post-it like box it'd be cool. The fields in it would then be editable
by clicking on them (just like titles and descriptions of a photo on
flickr. i.e. Displayed using standard formatting but change to a
'design formatting' when clicked, which allows them to be edited-
clicking off them submits the changes and returns the field into
'standard display formatting. Its hard to explain, just check out
editing titles for you own photos on flickr')

-Blocks of colour behind today and tommorow sections? Everything is so
white and gray. Sure, its a datastore but it'd still be nice if it
looked pretty, post it note shapes, paper simulated graphics etc.. I
need to see what i have coming up at a glance and colour, in blocks and
with text is a huge help for this!

-Similar to above it would be nice if events didnt simply have a
certain coloured bullet point beside them but instead had a solid block
of colour behind them. To make sure the text is readable the text would
have to become automatically darker than the fill behind it, or lighter
depending on selected colour for each type of event. (look at
http://images.apple.com/macosx/features/ical/images/index_top_20050412.jpg
for an example). This has the added advantage of making it much easier
to see exactly what type of events you have that month, at a glance.
Also makes the calender more colourful. Having the same block colour
behind events in 'today' or 'tommorow' field alongside a big. more
typographic version of the lable would be nice

-Link beside 'Next 3 weeks' to show the 3 weeks after the current view.
Currently I have to go month --> next month just to see an event 1 day
off my main page.

-printable calender, ical support, xml, rss, all the stuff everyone
else has suggested. Being able to publish all this data to different
medias is crucial!

just some suggestions, ask if I didn't explain any of the points
clearly enough. Look forward to seeing what ical turns into

luke

[lukew...@gmail.com]

also hipcal plugin for netvibes or google personalised home would
surely help publicise hipcal amongst the technorati

[lukew...@gmail.com]

sorry about the multiple posts.. I keep thinking up suggestions. On the
web 2.0, integration theme, tying hipcal into blogging tools such as
blogger would be cool and would generate interest. For example having a
little 'blog this' button on the information display for each event
whereby the title and description of event come up in a new, editable
post on the users blog would be a good idea, allowing users to easily
blog about events. Connection, integration etc.

hope at least some of these suggestions are helpful.

luke