1806800 - Intermediate days for multi-day events do not show up in Today Pane

Status: NEW

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, defect)

Description

[Victor]

Steps to reproduce:

Add a new multi-day event that spans more than two days to calendar (e.g. 2022-12-27 to 2022-12-30)

Actual results:

Only the first and last days (e.g. 2022-12-27 and 2022-12-30) are showing up in the Events/calendar sidebar

Expected results:

All days (e.g. 2022-12-27, 2022-12-28, 2022-12-29, 2022-12-30 in this case) should show up in the Events/calendar sidebar

I am not quite sure when did this "break" or if this is a new "feature" (I have been using 90.something since 2020 or so), but I am absolutely certain this was not like such earlier.

This makes it immensely hard to get a quick insight of what going on at a specific date without clicking around and/or reviewing even multiple weeks.

Comment 1

[Victor]

If there is a configuration option for this, then I beg your pardon – but even then, given that being a change from the previous default, it should have been advertised in a way more visible manner.

Comment 2

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Thank you Victor! Confirming for 102.6.0, Win10. I consider this a pretty serious regression, because now I'll never know if there's some multi-day event ongoing for a certain day in the future without looking at today or a random end date if it happens to be shown. If this was changed by design, it should be an option, and probably off by default.

• Today will show multi-day events which are ongoing today (even if they started before today)
• Intermediate days starting from tomorrow are showing nothing at all for multi-day events, which regressed from TB 91.
• Multi-day end date may or may or may not appear on the Today pane, depending how far it is away.

Comment 3

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Attachment: Screenshot 1: TB 102 no longer showing multi-day events on intermediate days

Here's a screenshot comparing TB 91 vs. TB 102 with the same multi-day event (21-12-2022 - 02-01-2023).
TB 102 no longer showing multi-day events on intermediate days (this bug). Note the inconsistency with the main calendar view, where (of course) multi-day events are showing up on every included day.

Comment 4

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

Alice, regression-window would be great, but only if you can afford the time.

Comment 5

[Alice0775 White]

How do I create the multi-day events?
Am I doing something wrong in the following method?

STR

1. calendar tab(alt+3)
2. click week
3. drag mouse from start to end to create events across multiple days
4. type title of the event and enter
5. close the calendar tab
6. observe the event in the sidebar, and click <,> to change the day you want to display.

It works as expected on TB102.6.1. I can see the events.

Comment 6

[Victor]

Nah; "click <,> to change the day you want to display" works well.

However, when today is selected, there is an overview below it (Today, Tomorrow, .., .. – currently I have 9 days listed); and there does it happen that (e.g.) "Tuesday, December 27" shows the start day of a 4-day event, then "Wednesday, December 28" does not; "Thursday, December 29" does not again; and finally, the end day is again listed properly on "Thursday, December 30".

As @thomas8 shows, for me, if I go to any other day (with "<", ">"), then no such "overview" is displayed at all.
However I am not sure if this is a regression/bug or not, as I have actually never used the caret buttons to go anywhere (nor did I find the need for doing so).

What I miss is the entry for the event on – in the example above – "Wednesday, December 28" and "Thursday, December 29".

If I click on any event, in the "calendar mini-view", it is clearly observable that it lasts 4 days (i.e. all have the "darker grey" background).

In fact my complaint is indeed that I now have to use the Calendar tab, something I have also never found the need for. Before the sidebar was broken, it covered 99.5% of our use cases.

Comment 7

[Victor]

Attachment: Screenshot from the sidebar

Comment 8

[Victor]

I added a screenshot to help with understanding. (Should have started with this, but had to redact our corporate agenda of invasion of Earth for GDPR reasons, hahhah).

The event labels with scroll-downward arrows at their end (supposedly) are multi-day events, so their start day can also be roughly observed.

(As a side note, however, at the end dates these arrows could be upwards-pointing, given that they are not actions that otherwise do anything, to help with comprehension.)

Comment 9

[Danny Colin [:sdk]]

Sounds more like a WONTFIX to me. In 102, the first item in the pane shows that the event continue today (double arrow icon) while the last item indicates when it will end (arrow with bottom horizontal line). This implicitly means the event is also happening in-between these dates.

Adding all days the event occurs in the pane whould just add unnecessary noise to it.

Comment 10

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Danny Colin [:sdk] from comment #9)

Sounds more like a WONTFIX to me. In 102, the first item in the pane shows that the event continue today (double arrow icon) while the last item indicates when it will end (arrow with bottom horizontal line). This implicitly means the event is also happening in-between these dates.

Unfortunately if the multi-day event ends a month ahead, you will never see the end of it in the Today pane, so you'll remain with that tiny arrow indication on today's events. Moreover, you may not see any indication of a multi-day event at all if your week is packed, you're looking at a later day in the week (so Today is scrolled out of view), and your multi-day events run longer than the visible period, so you won't see their end either (see reporter's screenshot attachment 9309570 [details]: Today out of view, 7 multi-day events ending on Fri, 30-Dec, but only 4 seen starting, and those may be different events again). So implicitly may not work well at all for many users...

Adding all days the event occurs in the pane would just add unnecessary noise to it.

Well, that "noise" has been there all along and I'm not aware that anyone has ever complained.
This is definitely not wontfix. If anything, we could decide to make it an option, and probably default to the long-standing previous behaviour.

TL;DR:
I maintain that the mental processing load for having to check all events of today to figure out if they might spill over into future dates shown on the Today pane is just way too much; and Today might not even be visible if my week is packed, it's Monday and I want to check out Friday - in that case no multi-day event may be visible, but many may apply to Friday! Imagine if (like in reporter's screenshots of comment 7), you have multiple multi-day events going on, which might start and end on different days - good luck with parsing in your head which ones are still running on a given future day. If I look at tomorrow or any other future day, I want an instant explicit overview of all events that are going on, including applicable multi-day events. We can discuss visual representation perhaps (although there's not much room for that in Today pane), but asking to see an event on all days where it's actually happening (as in TB 91) is not asking too much.

Comment 11

[Thomas D. (:thomas8)]

(In reply to Alice0775 White from comment #5)

How do I create the multi-day events?
Am I doing something wrong in the following method?

Almost there, sorry for not providing accurate steps! You can have a look of my screenshot attachment 9309550 [details] of comment 3, the problem is marked with red square.

STR

1. From main 3-pane mail tab, lower-right corner of status bar, show Today Pane with Events only, and click on circle to show Today.
2. Click on New Event button to create a new multi-day event:

• Title: "Multi-day event"
• Start date: Before today, e.g. yesterday.
• End date: 1 month from today (so that the end date won't show in Today pane).
• Press Enter to save the event.

4. For added clarity, create some other 1-hour events tomorrow and/or current week.
5. Check for presence of the multi-day event in the Today Pane (sidebar):

• Today
• Tomorrow
• Other days of this week

Actual result:

• Today will show multi-day events which are ongoing today (even if they started before today); but if your calendar is packed and you're looking at a future day towards the end of Today Pane, you may have to scroll Today out of view, so the visible section of Today Pane may have no trace of ongoing multi-day events at all (this bug).
• Intermediate days starting from tomorrow are showing nothing at all for ongoing multi-day events (this bug), which regressed from TB 91.
• Multi-day event's end date may or may or may not appear on the Today Pane, depending how far it is away.
• Furthermore, you may have multiple multi-day events which start and end on different days. Happy brain-jogging and scrolling back and forth trying to figure out which one applies (or not) to the future day you're looking at!

Expected result:

• As in TB 91, multi-day events must be displayed on every day they apply to, including tomorrow and all other days visible in the Today pane.

Comment 12

[Alice0775 White]

Attachment: good/bad build

Regression window:
https://hg.mozilla.org/comm-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=41d1ae8352e0f073442b0fa99388515126e095b0&tochange=929e02971753a8c1d3808b8089c8b2b6b8bca7f9

Suspect: 0cf0d7c55bcec3af55266ff9b2fc6615b5547811 Geoff Lankow — Bug 1728743 - Refresh the Today Pane agenda. r=mkmelin

Comment 13

[Anje]

Adding all days the event occurs in the pane whould just add unnecessary noise to it.

In Settings > Calendar, the 'Today Pane' can show a reasonably lengthy agenda - Up to 4 weeks.
This is a personal setting, in my case it is 2 weeks.
It should display the event for Today, Tomorrow and any other day that event is running where the setting to display date range is setup.
No one expects Events that are running eg: Tomorrow to be missing for any reason.

If some people consider it 'noise' to be informed what is occuring Tomorrow then it is still possible to alter the 'Settings' and only display 1 day.

Comment 14

[Victor]

(In reply to Danny Colin [:sdk] from comment #9)

Sounds more like a WONTFIX to me.

The real problem seems to be that someone fixed it already, without announcement, or (per the issue on bzr) even intent.

In 102, the first item in the pane shows that the event continue today (double arrow icon) while the last item indicates when it will end (arrow with bottom horizontal line). This implicitly means the event is also happening in-between these dates.
Adding all days the event occurs in the pane whould just add unnecessary noise to it.

This may make sense for the carpe diem people. Many of us do prefer getting a broader view of what's going on though – hence do we have set/not changed the default time window for the 'Today Pane'.
This is probably why we have failed to complain about the noise until it was fixed.

Comment 15

[Victor]

Thank you, Alice!

(BTW, is this bisection flow as manual as it is apparent to me? Can I read somewhere about it? Is it even public?)

Comment 16

[Alice0775 White]

I manually bisected with download build from https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/nightly/ or https://firefox-ci-tc.services.mozilla.com/tasks/index/comm.v2.comm-central.pushdate if within a year.