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:

• An E-Mail account (Mail Account Tree),
• A Calendar (Mini Moth),
• An Agenda List (Agenda Tab),
• A Todo List (Todo Tab)and
• Calendars (Calendar Tab)

The problem with that solution is that 70% of the visual information is placed on 30% of the screen. So what we need is more space for the information. Not all information available in the left pane has the same level of importance. In the context of creating an e-mail the elements could be prioritized as follows:

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

But in the context of creating an event from within the calendar views the priorities shift to:

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