Comments on: Cracking calendars

By: Kieran O'Shea

Kieran O'Shea — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 16:52:07 +0000

Yeah I think I was trying to say that there isn't as many examples of online Calendaring in a visible format - its mostly been e-mails etc. in my experience. As has been pointed out there are examples of date based information being disseminated but its the display format which is the most important thing if you are going to get the mainstream on board. I have found it lacking in many cases; lists of events, days of the week are often missing and just dates are listed etc. I'm interested in getting exports in flat file format (iCal and the like) set up from my WordPress calendar as there has been a lot of demand for this. I found a really nice web based calendar this morning which goes one step further in providing a breakdown of what is going on over periods of time. Obviously its related to academic terms but the way it behaves is fluid and intuitive. It has certainly given me some ideas anyhow.

By: Simon

Simon — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:22:13 +0000

I'm not saying there aren't any examples out there... just that there aren't many. And it's not as if there isn't plenty of date-based information out there, which would be perfectly suited to it. Besides, based on past experience, the academics and football fans are usually well ahead of the game. I have fond memories of using the Arsenal fans' emailing list whilst at university, back in 1993. (Run out of MIT, interestingly!)

By: Jeremy Gould

Jeremy Gould — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 12:42:26 +0000

But hasn't this stuff been around for a long time? I've been subsribed to football fixtures calendars for over four years and I know that quite a few academic institutions syndicate course timetables (lectures, deadlines for essays etc) via .ics.

You're right that is often not visible on web pages but there's quite a lot of it around.

By: Kieran O'Shea

Kieran O'Shea — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 11:29:44 +0000

Many thanks for mentioning my plugin

I think you are right about date-based information being the next big thing. In my opinion the reason it hasn't been at the fore-front so far is because of how difficult it can be to get dates to work exactly the way we as human beings want them to on a computer system. There are disagreements on time zones, date formatting, what day the week should start on and other such things.

As I have discovered, all of this makes producing a calendar that pleases everybody a bit of a challenge! Still I hope that my next version, as you say a major update, will go some way to making many more users happy.