Open Bug 328923 Opened 18 years ago Updated 2 years ago

Hide Time or Customize Display in Month View

Categories

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, enhancement)

enhancement

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: david, Unassigned)

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(4 files)

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060111 Firefox/1.5.0.1

I usually use the search view on the top to view the details of events within the next week or two, it's therefore repetitious (at least to me) to have the time repeated below in the calendar's month view [in the calendar-box for each day].  More importantly, the time is to long (the text takes up half of the width of a day's box) leaving little room to see the name of the event.  I'd much reather see  more of the events name at a glance in the month-view, than the times.

A simple option to adjust how the events are displayed in the month-view would be very useful.  To keep things simple, it could be a choice of (1) displaying the full time (the current default), or (2) an indication of AM, PM, or All-Day Event (the current * and/or symbols for AM/PM), or (3) Event-Name only.  

[Choice 2 is how I would prefer to see it configured in the Month-View, but I'm sure that's not for everyone.]

Reproducible: Always
Component: General → Calendar Views
QA Contact: general → views
Confirming bug as per Roadmap discussion at the Hamburg F2F meeting.

I think there should definitely be some set of options, especially in thought of bug 307892. CC'ing Christian to see how this can be solved best in UI.
Status: UNCONFIRMED → NEW
Ever confirmed: true
OS: Windows XP → All
Hardware: PC → All
Target Milestone: --- → Lightning 0.7
Milestone 0.7 Consolidation. Filter on PinkyANDBrain to get rid of bugspam.
Target Milestone: Lightning 0.7 → Sunbird 0.7
In addition to the bug that Philipp mentioned, Bug 231486 might also be related to this one.  I was initially opposed to it because I was thinking that it meant that there would be too many rows per event if the event's title wrapped onto five rows, for example.

However, since then, I've realized that I'm strongly in favor of some kind of solution if there would be a limit on the total number of displayed rows per event.

My personal preferences for the month view:

1) Show both the start and end times of an event (unless it's an all-day event), followed by its title.

2) If all of that doesn't fit on one row, then wrap as much as possible onto a second row, but I would not want to use more than two rows per event.

3) Since every character is precious, it would be nice to avoid using "..." at the end of the rows because it's such a waste of space, at least in the month view.  For example, if the row ends with
"Appointment" and we currently see
"Appoint...", I would prefer that this be changed to
"Appointm.." or
"Appointme>" or even just
"Appointmen".  The idea of course is to show as many characters of the title as possible.

Just some thoughts...
(In reply to comment #3)
> 3) Since every character is precious, it would be nice to avoid using "..." at
> the end of the rows because it's such a waste of space, at least in the month
> view.  For example, if the row ends with

There is a one-char ellipsis character (…) that should be used there. (Not sure if we do). That doesn't take that much space, so i don't see any reason for not using it.
Flags: blocking-calendar0.7+
Whiteboard: [roadmap 0.7]
This bug is blocking 0.7 but there is no concrete decision on how this should be done from a UI point of view.
I think it would make most sense to let users modify the amount of information they want to see.

By default lighning should display:

- The "Start Time" + "AM/ PM info" + "Event Title"
  
  It should be possible to modify that:
 
  Possible options could be:
 
  [X] Show Start Time
  [ ] Show End Time

   
Very Narrow Boxes & Long Titled Events:

- Long titled events should wrap over more than one row
   - max. 3 rows, than short title by using ellipses

- If the boxes get to narrow for displaying the "time" + "title" lightning should first hide the "end time", than the "start time" followed by shortening the event title.

In addition to that, it would be good to remove the drop shadow + the event box for the month view (only!). Doing so, would let the month view look more light weight.

I've attached a mock-up which visualizes the proposed changes.
(In reply to comment #6)
> - The "Start Time" + "AM/ PM info" + "Event Title"

There is also bug 271162 that is related to this bug.

> - If the boxes get to narrow for displaying the "time" + "title" lightning
> should first hide the "end time", than the "start time" followed by shortening
> the event title.

I agree in general, but I think that we should also talk about how this should be handled with three rows per event (Lightning) versus only one row per event (e.g. Outlook 2007).  For the people who aren't familiar with this behavior, I've attached an Outlook 2007 screenshot that demonstrates this for one-row events.

However, if Lightning will have three rows per event, then perhaps the behavior should be different.  My concern is that I don't want the start/end times to be removed simply because there is an ellipsis.  For example, consider the following situations:

row1: |1700-1900   |   (you gain nothing by removing the start/end times)
row2: |VeryBigWord…|

row1: |1700-1900|   (you can see 3.5 words (16 chars) of the title,
row2: |one two  |    so keep start/end times because they're more
row3: |three fo…|    important than the rest of the title)

row1: |1700  |   (okay, drop end time but keep start time)
row2: |one   |
row3: |two t…|

row1: |one|
row2: |two|
row3: |th…|

Because we're using three rows per event instead of one, I'm thinking that only the width of row1 (and whether or not the start/end times fit in row1) should determine if the times are removed.  No?
(In reply to comment #6)
> In addition to that, it would be good to remove the drop shadow +
> the event box for the month view (only!).

I understand the reasoning, but I hope that the decorations are not completely removed from the month and multiweek views.  I think that certain categories are better with the decorations.  The attached screenshot shows an example of decorated multiday events, holidays, and birthdays.

I noticed from your screenshot that you've already considered this.  The allday event in the middle is decorated (it's green and has no calendar icon), but the two on the right are not.  That is what I'd like to have: decorations but only for categories that I specify.

For normal events and tasks, it doesn't matter as much to me.  I'm happy with the current behavior because I use soft colors for normal events, but the proposed behavior with the calendar icon and no decorations would be okay.

Ideally we could go to the category list in Lightning's options and specify which categories should have the decorations.

For now, however, it would be nice if we could at least control this with the already existing CSS rules for categories.  My fear, however, is that this could be complicated for users like me if I have to manually add a lot of CSS rules to enable the gradient image, the drop shadows, the borders, etc.  Ideally we could enable/disable it for each category with a single CSS statement.
(In reply to comment #8)
[...]
> 
> row1: |1700-1900   |   (you gain nothing by removing the start/end times)
> row2: |VeryBigWord…|
> 
> row1: |1700-1900|   (you can see 3.5 words (16 chars) of the title,
> row2: |one two  |    so keep start/end times because they're more
> row3: |three fo…|    important than the rest of the title)
> 
> row1: |1700  |   (okay, drop end time but keep start time)
> row2: |one   |
> row3: |two t…|
> 
> row1: |one|
> row2: |two|
> row3: |th…|
> 
[...]
Thanks for this very good example. +1 for that.

(In reply to comment #9)

I've created a spin-off bug (Bug 391187) where we can continue the discussion on the event box design.
I think it makes sense to allow users to customize the visibility of the Start & End time for the "Day and Week View" separately from the "Month & Multi Week".
Assignee: nobody → philipp
Philipp, is this really a blocker for 0.7? This sounds a lot like a bug which
can also easily go in shortly after the release.
back to proposed list if we have time left.
Flags: blocking-calendar0.7+ → blocking-calendar0.7?
Since I will be concentrating more on the backend in the future, removing from my plate.
Assignee: philipp → nobody
Target Milestone: 0.7 → ---
Flags: blocking-calendar0.7? → wanted-calendar0.8+
Whiteboard: [roadmap 0.7] → [roadmap 0.8]
Not going to happen for 0.8.
Flags: wanted-calendar0.8+ → wanted-calendar0.8-
Flags: wanted-calendar0.8-
Whiteboard: [roadmap 0.8]
what is the status of this bug? Currently (1.0b1), in multiweek and month view, the events are just a list, and neither positioned by their time (Bug 246715) nor shown as blocks like in week or day view (Bug 338268). Especially the last request seems to me very useful.
Severity: normal → S3
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