607272 - It can be difficult to tell which month is which on multi-week

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, enhancement)

Description

[A. Barsby]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: 1.1a1pre

When you look at a calendar in multi-week view, there is no real distinction between the cells belonging to different months. This means you have to spend some time getting your bearings each time you look at your calendar.The same is true to a lessere extent when viewing as a month since the end of the previous month and start of the following month are also included, but in this case, there is a colour difference.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Set up a calendar in Sunbird or Lightning
2.View it in multi-week.
3.Notice that it is not clear where one month ends and the other begins
Actual Results:  
The cells all have the same background colour (apart from weekends), there is no indicator where one month ends and the next begins.

Expected Results:  
It would be useful to have a differing background colour, a line between months or an indicator down the side of the calendar.

Comment 1

[A. Barsby]

Attachment: A picture of two possible otions for improving readability

I have made an image showing how the border between two months could be made clear or how the months could be indicated clearly down one side of the calendar.

Comment 2

[MBY]

I'd like to lend my support to the problem reported here, but suggest a simpler solution.

Not knowing which month is which in multiweek view is very annoying. I find myself constantly having to double-check if an event was added in the right month. Frankly, even in month view it can be difficult to differentiate between the months sometimes. 

For me, this issue can be resolved entirely with a very simple enhancement - add the short month name to EACH day in multiweek and month view. So, instead of "1 Aug" for the first day and then just "2", "3" etc. for the following days, show "1 Aug", "2 Aug", "3 Aug" and so on for EACH day.

Comment 3

[石庭豐 (Seak, Teng-Fong)]

Yup, I agree with A. Barsby that Multiweek view makes it difficult to distinguish months.  Got to apply the same background color difference as in Month view.

However, about the proposal in the image:
* IMO, a thick vertical line in front of 1st of every month should be enough. The horizontal lines are actually quite ugly.
* The "month name" bar on the left side is nice, but that might not be as good in other languages because some languages just can't be written like that.

I also agree with MBY that short month name should be displayed for EVERYDAY.  I'm also using Outlook and I *hate* its calendar: I always have to go back to find the 1st of the month to make sure I'm in the correct month.