387420 - Today Pane: Show MiniMonth instead of MiniDay

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 429687

(Calendar :: Lightning Only, enhancement)

Description

[Pete Riley]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4
Build Identifier: 

I would like the ability to see the MiniMonth in the Today Pane instead of the MiniDay.  This could be a user option.

I would also like to suggest these behaviors for the minimonth:

1) A single click in the minimonth could change the today pane to that day.

2) A double click could change Thunderbird to "Calendar Mode" using the most recently used view (e.g. month view), with that day selected.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Comment 1

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Pete, please file only bugs for existing features.

The today pane is currently still being implemented and it is not fully known
whether this bug will even apply to the final version.

Comment 2

[Bernd]

But the mini-day view in 0.7 is less useful IMHO compared to the month display that 0.5 had. Its the most criticized "feature" in 0.7 if you look at mozillazine forums and addons.

Comment 3

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

It would be good to have this in 0.8

Comment 4

[ovidiu]

Maybe u can show both, or as a switch (with small tabs up or just by clicking on it to switch between). 

Comment 5

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

Not going to happen for 0.8.

Comment 6

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #2)
> But the mini-day view in 0.7 is less useful IMHO compared to the month display
> that 0.5 had. Its the most criticized "feature" in 0.7 if you look at
> mozillazine forums and addons.

Agreed, next to the issue on the today-pane location in the main window.
Bug 404681 provides a collection of links to those comments.

Comment 7

[klumy]

>I would like the ability to see the MiniMonth in the Today Pane instead of the
>MiniDay.  This could be a user option.

I support this request. This is a real useful option!!

Comment 8

[Christian Jansen]

Makes sense do do this for .9. We should offer the following options:

Show: None, Mini Month, Mini Day

Comment 9

[Christian Jansen]

This feature should be available with .9. Please take in count that is part of the goals list for .9

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Calendar:Lightning09#Today_Pane

Comment 10

[Berend Cornelius]

Since some weeks the today-pane is available in all modes and as we already provide a minimonth on the left sidepane in these modes I am asking myself how we are going to introduce this new feature:

If the user chooses to display the minimonth in calendarmode/taskmode within the todaypane, what is going to happen with the other minimonth, should it just automatically change its location? What happens with the respective menu-item in the "View" menu?  It would be somehow misplaced under this condition. 
Or do we want to provide two minimonths in calendar mode - one to control the calendarviews and one to control the today-pane. This redundancy would probably be hard to communicate. In taskmode we should then better skip the left-panel minimonth since it does not control anything in this mode.
Should we possibly only offer the minimonth in mailmode and leave the other modes with a miniday as they are?
Or should we skip this feature at all?

Any further ideas?

Comment 11

[Pete Riley]

Attachment: Minimonth screenshot

FWIW, I no longer need a minimonth in Mail Mode because I now use the Google Desktop Sidebar which always has a clock, minimonth, and temperature display on my screen, even when I'm using non-Thunderbird programs.  I attached a screenshot of my Mail Mode.  So, because I'm the person who created this bug, it's fine with me if you close it (if no one else cares about the bug).

However, I realize that it will be many years before everyone has a widescreen monitor and can show the Google/Linux/Vista sidebars, so I'll offer my opinions...

Mail Mode:  I agree with Christian that it would be nice to have a choice of minimonth, miniday, or none.  Personally I would choose the "None" option.  I only need the event and task lists in the today pane in mail mode.  I never navigate to a different day using the today pane's controls -- it's easier to use month view to see the big picture.

Calendar/Task Modes:  I've chosen to hide the today pane in these modes because I decided that it uses too much screen space and I don't need it anyway because I'm in Mail Mode 90% of the time.  However, if I used it, I agree that it would be too unintuitive for most users (and perhaps unnecessarily complex to implement/maintain) to be able to change the today pane to one date and change the left-side minimonth and main view to a different date.

Thus I would vote to not have a right-side minimonth or miniday in the today pane in Calendar/Task modes, but only the today pane's task list in Calendar Mode and its event list in Task Mode.  It would be nice if both the event and task lists would have Today/Tomorrow/Soon sections.

Continuing the thought, if the today pane would only have the task list in Calendar mode and the event list in Task mode, then why have a today pane in Calendar/Task modes at all?  I would prefer to see the corresponding event or task list at the bottom of the left pane (underneath the calendar list) because I think that this would maximize screen space.

It's possible that the calendar list will eventually be a collapsible tree where people will only have to click on the high-level checkboxes to show/hide groups of calendars in the views and thus keep most of the tree collapsed, most of the time.  Also, some people (including myself) only have a small number of calendars in the list, so I think that the left pane has too much wasted space and IMO putting the event/task list there would be nicer.

Currently, my left pane is mostly empty in Calendar mode.  In Task mode, people are talking about changing the task-filtering options (above the calendar list) to a drop-down box.  I think that is a goog idea, but then there will also be a lot of wasted space in the left pane in Task mode.

Comment 12

[rsx11m]

(In reply to comment #11)
> FWIW, I no longer need a minimonth in Mail Mode because I now use the Google
> Desktop Sidebar which always has a clock, minimonth, and temperature display on
> my screen, even when I'm using non-Thunderbird programs.

Good to know that this options exists, but nevertheless, it would be preferable to have a choice of having the Lightning minimonth as alternative to the miniday in the Today pane. It cannot be expected that everybody who wants it installs the Google Desktop Sidebar.