Calendar:Improving the Calendar Views

Current Issues (Lightning 0.3)

The table below lists users feedback regarding the usability of the main Lightning UI.

Issues:

1. The calendar below the email accounts is disturbing and to big if you also use the "contact sidebar" extension.
2. After starting Thunderbird I don't know in which calendar I'm working in.
3. I can't drag an event from one calendar into another.
4. All the different colors in the week view are confusing me. Especially same things are highlighted differentially.
5. I want to switch between E-Mail and Calendar easily.
6. Why am I seeing the mail tree when I'm working in the Calendar?
7. I don't want to see Saturday and Sunday. I use my calendar only for my work.
8. The left side looks very cluttered.
9. How can I switch into a different view?
10. I have 3 calendars. One for work, the other are subscribed ones. Which means that I don't have write access on these. I don't know how many times I tried accidentally to create an event in one of the read only calendars.

Proposal

Most of the issues stated above can be fixed by focusing on the following areas:

Rearranging already existing UI elements

At the moment, Lightning 0.3 combines very important information on the left hand side. From an users point of view these are:

• Access to the E-Mail account (Mail Account Tree),
• a Calendar (Mini Moth),
• an Agenda List (Agenda Tab),
• a Todo List (Todo Tab)and
• a list of Calendars (Calendar Tab)

The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen.

Depending on the task users want to fulfill, each element of the left hand pane has a different importance level.

For the tasks "Write or Read Mail" the order could be:

1. Mail Account Tree
2. Agenda
3. Mini Month
4. Todo
5. Calendar

For the task "Create Event" the order is different:

1. Calendar
2. Mini Month
3. Agenda
4. Todo
5. Mail Account Tree

To reduce visual clutter I'd like to propose to split the Mail/Calendar pane into two separate parts.

• One pane which focuses on mail reading/writing,
• the other on calendaring.

The table below lists the items of each pane:

Mail Pane	Calendar Pane
* Mail Account Tree	* Mini Month
	* Calendar Subscriptions

Improved Views

Mail

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| M A I L -- T O O L B A R                                     |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| M A I L         ||________________________________||Agenda  X|
|`````````````````||                                ||`````````|
| - Account       || Hello       xyz@abc.com        ||         |
|  - Inbox        || ...                            ||         |
|  - Sent         ||                                ||         |
|  - Junk         ||--------------------------------||         |
|  + ....         || From: xyz@abc.com              ||         |
|                 ||                                ||         |
|                 ||--------------------------------||---------|
|                 || Hi there!                      ||Todo    x|
|                 || cxcds  dfdf dfvdvf             ||`````````|
|                 || dfldkf fff                     ||         |
|                 ||                                ||         |
|                 ||                                ||         |
|                 ||                                ||         |
|________________ ||                                ||         |
| C A L E N D A R ||                                ||         |
|-----------------||                                ||         |
| T A S K S       ||                                ||         |
|-----------------||________________________________||_________|
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
 

Calendar

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| C A L E N D A R - - T O O L B A R                            |
|---------------------------____________-----------------------|
| C A L E N D A R ||___Day__|Work WEEK |_Month______||Agenda  X|
|`````````````````||   |Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri ||```````` |
| Work            ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||         |
| Private         || 8 | // |     |     |     |     ||         |
| NFL             ||---|-//-|-----|-----|-----|-----||         |
| Team            || 9 | // |     |     |     |     ||         |
| Birthdays       ||---|----|-///-|-----|-----|-----||         |
|                 || 10|    | /// |     |     |     ||         |
|                 ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||---------|
|-----------------|| 11|    |     |     |     |     ||Todo    X|
|  October 2006   ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||`````````|
|   X X X X X X   || 12|    |     | /// |     |     ||         |
| X X X X X X X   ||---|----|-----|-///-|-----|-----||         |
| X X X X X X X   || 1 |    |     |     |     |     ||         |
| X X X X         ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||         |
|________________ || 2 |    |     |     |     |     ||         |
| M A I L         ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||         |
|-----------------|| 3 |    |     |     |     |     ||         |
| T A S K S       ||---|----|-----|-----|-----|-----||         |
|-----------------||________________________________||_________|
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
 

Tasks

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| T A S K S - - T O O L B A R                                  |
|--------------------------------------------------------------|
| T A S K S       ||___________________________________________|
|`````````````````||                                           |
| 0 This Week     ||  [-] Do Car Wash                          |
| 0 My Tasks      ||      sdnsdsd fcfdf ffdf dfdf              |
| O Next Seven Da ||      ds fcfdf hhj wew                     |
|                 ||                                           |
|                 ||  [+] Do Project Planning                  |
|                 ||                                           |
|                 ||  [+] GUI Planning XYZ                     |
|-----------------||                                           |
|  October 2006   ||                                           |
|   X X X X X X   ||                                           |
| X X X X X X X   ||                                           |
| X X X X X X X   ||                                           |
| X X X X         ||                                           |
|________________ ||                                           |
| C A L E N D A R ||                                           |
|-----------------||                                           |
| M A I L         ||                                           |
|-----------------||___________________________________________|
+--------------------------------------------------------------+