657238 - Allow and Add user preference for complete hiding of off-hours in day and multiday views

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Calendar :: Calendar Frontend, enhancement)

Description

[Starko]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1
Build Identifier: 

In most cases big part of the day are off-hours that fall outside of Day Starts and Day Ends values. Most often those hours are not used for making appointments. Displaying those hours often detracts from the usability of Calendar (both Lightning and Sunbird). Quite a few users would benefit from ability to hide those off-hours from the view completely rather than visually distinguishing them (by shading) from the day hours. 

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Choose day or multiday view 
2. Set Day Starts to 8AM, Day Ends to 10PM, and "Show X hours per view" to 8. This is a real life work day hours of a medical wellness center with multiple therapists. Setting "Show X hours per view" to 8 allows higher resolution grid for easier bookings of appointments at 00, 15, 30, 45 minutes of the hour.


Actual Results:  
Annoyance #1. On start Sunbird displays midnight as first hour and one has to scroll down to see the first appointments. Lightning behaves better and displays Day Starts hour as the first hour of the view.
Annoyance #2. When booking or searching for appointments that fall outside the 8 hour window, scrolling (with mouse wheel) almost always goes further than Days Starts or Day Ends hours. This is most annoying when scrolling up and ending up seeing night hours from 0 to 8AM.

Expected Results:  
Please add an option to completely hide/remove off-hours from view see mockup :
http://www.starojitski.nl/calendar/hide_off_hour_option.png

I believe for most people that would eliminate scroll bar completely while giving a very clean interface. Especially hiding hours when you sleep and NEVER make any appointments makes it better.
http://www.starojitski.nl/calendar/nine_to_five.png

Besides visual purity, this allows user to expect certain hours to be at specific locations when scrolled completely up or down. 
Less thinking time trying to find the right hour
Less need for precision when scrolling.
Multiply this times 100 per day x 350 days = much less frustration

Comment 1

[Starko]

Attachment: Options dialog with the new setting "Show day hours only"

Of course the setting can be reversed to "Hide off hours"

Comment 2

[Starko]

Attachment: Mockup of 9AM to 5PM calendar with off hours hidden

When the number of hours to display is set to equal or greater than the number of day hours, the vertical scroll bar is not needed.

Comment 3

[Yvan Manon]

A problem appear when adding an event throughout the day.

Two case :

1- "adding an event throughout one day", it fill on top of calendar only a small line, that not represente all the hours of the day, it not usefull
2- "adding an event from 9am the third to 18pm the fourth", it fills the hours, and fill even night time

I don't work on night time!

These feature describe by starko, could resolve the problem i've exposed to by selecting only works-hours

Comment 4

[Evan]

Support!

Because all the off-work hours are empty, I do not need to display them.

Thanks,
Evan

Comment 5

[Blane Robertson]

Suggestions above are good, but at least provide a setting or make the displayed view default to 'working hours' instead of starting @ midnight.  Since I frequently have stuff scheduled after-hours (particularly in the evenings), I do not want to hide the off hours permanently as some have suggested.