[Evolution-hackers] Re: evo calendar mockup

[Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>]

On Wed, 2003-07-23 at 16:39, Ettore Perazzoli wrote: 
> >       * "Add new task" currently has the "click here" box which is a bit
> >         ugly and distracting. Something that looks like a weblink is
> >         much simpler looking. It could then create you a new task with
> >         the summary hilighted and reading "New task" or something by
> >         default.
> 
> Yeah this I am not actually sure about.  I am not a big fan of web-like
> links in UIs unless they are actual web links.  :-)  What would it look
> like if it was just a button?
> 
> Actually, what if we just use a "+" button like they do on the Mac?  I
> like that, it's unobtrusive, looks clean, has pretty obvious meaning. 
> (However, I don't think it's suggested anywhere in the HIG...  Maybe it
> should though.)
Can you point me to a screenshot? I havent seen iCal for real, just
shots (dont have Jaguar nor Panther here, though I should maybe get it
just to see where they are going in their desktop)

That was just an idea, whatever else might work, what bugs me with the
current stuff is the black frame that pops in your eyes instead of the
actual tasks. So yea, we can find something that works :)

> >       * The calendar "Day View" right side now has pretty much the
> >         important things from Summary so we can just ditch it if we
> >         want. If there is a real need for mail summary, that can also be
> >         there, but that could potentially get very big. I think a
> >         separate "mailbox watch" window/application could be a better
> >         idea for that.
> 
> Yeah.  Actually, I don't know if we can afford doing the "news headline"
> / "weather" bit...  The current RDF parser in the summary is total crap
> (so we'd have to rewrite it or use something else), also it's more work
> to figure out the UI (more configuration...).

Honestly, I never use the news headlines on the summary anyway. That
sounds like just featuritis, there are web browsers for reading news
sites.

The weather stuff *would* be useful on the other hand, and I dont think
that would be too hard to do - I bet there is some METAR/TAF decoding
code around, and I can parse that stuff anyway, it is fairly well
defined format. Gweather also has stuff for that anyway, so it shouldnt
be impossible.

The reason I'd like weather on the calendar is because it would be just
cool: planning for picnic for friday would be nice, but the forecast
tells me there could be rain, so maybe not. You get the idea. Seeing all
that on the calendar itself is nice. The most useful place for it might
be in the week view though, like you can get on Yahoo calendar - see a
week ahead with temperature and sun/rain/cloud forecast for each day. I
think that would be nice.

Now that we talk about the calendar, another thing I think might be nice
is a "scrolling view" - have "N days ahead" calendar that looks like
"week view" but it always starts on the current day. So today it would
show "Wed / Thu / Fri / Sat / Sun / Mon / Tue" - the next 7 days. Having
a "one week per page" is sort of playing with the limitations of printed
paper calendars and those are sort of unneccessary in digital calendar
applications. Of course many people have that mindset anyway, but it
might be useful to see just, say, 7 days ahead regardless what weekday
it happens to be.

> It does look very nice though!  Thanks for the work on this -- maybe I
> could even get the calendar hackers to start working on the changes... 
> Right now Rodrigo is doing some refactoring to allow overlayed calendar
> views, and he could do the colorization and prettyfication next.

that would be awesome. I'd really want to see this stuff in the calendar
- it's currently sort of nice, but I never use it since I am too lazy to
just type stuff in. I mean I could have release schedules and all that
stuff there but it makes so much more sense to have those in Synapse.
Etc.

> Also I have some open questions:
> 
>       * How are we going to pick the colors?  Should the palette be
>         themeable?  Is it even possible for it to be so?

I think we could have a sort of random colorization - one could well
have a color picker that one can change in "configure this calendar"
dialog, but it should just pick nice washed out pastel-like tones by
default. We can define a bunch - most people probably wont have over 10
overlaid calendars anyway, and if those really kick in and people start
having huge numbers we can always have more colors.

But yea, one could put a configurable color thing there but it should
just pick you a color automatically by default - change it later if you
really need to.

>       * What is it going to look like when you have categories in
>         addition to multiple calendars?  We need to display the category
>         icons in the calendar items as well.

Separate overlaid calendars can sort of work as categories too. But on
the other hand, I guess the ical standard has the category stuff.

Do people find those useful, and are they actually being used? If I have
a calendar event "Wife's birthday" it does not really become any better
if it has a birthday cake emblem since the name makes it obvious anyway.
Of course if one can filter by category or by source calendar, or by
weekday etc, then it might be useful since one can do vfolder-like views
from calendars and that could be useful too. "I want to see all movie
previews on fridays and saturdays, and also this sailing club events
whenever there is something after 6pm on weekdays, or any time on
weekends. I dont have time for those during work hours anyway, so no
need to see them cluttering the view"

That kind of stuff might be useful.

But for the icons, I guess they can fit just fine somewhere there, that
shouldnt be a big issue. And if there is none defined (which I really
think is the case for majority of the events anyway) - then just dont
show anything.

> BTW I think this stuff should go to the public mailing list.  ;-)

It should yea :) I am forwarding the original mail to evo-hackers now,
and now this mail goes to the list as well. So lets get the wheels
rolling :)

Best,

Tuomas


-- 

Tuomas Kuosmanen <tigert ximian com>