New UI for Calendar?

[Ed Hansberry]

<a href="http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2002/07-29msrsummit.asp">http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/speeches/2002/07-29msrsummit.asp</a><br /><br />As someone who has been using Pocket Informant for nearly two years, I can tell you that Calendar <i>needs</i> a new interface. Ben Bederson, presumably a .NET developer or project manager, has been working on a new UI for your calendar and is playing with it on the Pocket PC. "So I want to show you this calendar interface that I've been developing for Pocket PC and it's running over here on this device. So our goal has been to support better planning and analysis tasks for calendar interfaces. So at the University of Maryland we developed this product called Date Lens. It's written in C#, and uses the .NET Compact Framework, and runs on Pocket PC, and there are other devices, as I'll show you. So it uses visualization, simple interaction and fish-eye distortions to navigate and so you can quickly see how this works over here. We just have to go to different dates and move around like this." So you can read more about the presentation at the link above but unfortunately there are no screen shots. (Is that "so" thing an MS thing or a Seattle thing? <img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/forums/images/smiles/icon_wink.gif" /> )<br /><br />It is also very interesting the amount of exposure the Pocket PC is getting with Mr. Gates. "Well, that's fantastic to see what you've done with .NET, and that is a wonderful UI. I'd love to have it on my Pocket PC." Source: JerryTroll<br /><br /><b>UPDATE!</b> rkrosen has found some screenshots and posted them inside the thread.

[Mr. Anonymous]

Unless I'm missing something, in talking about this nifty new UI someone neglected to show any screenshots!

[rkrosen]

Ben Bederson is at the University of Maryland. A description of the DateLens project is at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens/ (apparently it used to be called "FishCal"). I've added one screenshot and there are more at the site. No download right now.

This UI doesn't particularly appeal to me -- seems too cluttered.

- Rob

http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens/fishcal.png

[Mr. Anonymous]

Ooh, interesting...thanks rkrosen! There are more shots at http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens/screenshots.shtml.

It kinda looks like a cross between Excel and Calendar to me...

[Marc Zimmermann]

As someone who has been using Pocket Informant for nearly two years, I can tell you that Calendar needs a new interface.

Hmm, I dunno. I never thought that Pocket Informant or Agenda Fusion were more useful to me. The additional info made it too cluttered for my taste.

[vetteguy]

So there's someone working on calendar. So that's very good. So I wonder why there are people devoted to tweaking a UI that doesn't need tweaking when there are still parts of the core OS that don't work right? So I think that maybe someone needs to revisit some of their strategy, so they can decrease the problems these devices have so there aren't so many of us who get frustrated with them on a daily basis.

(In case you couldn't tell, there should be &lt;sarcasm> &lt;/sarcasm> around the above)

[PlayAgain?]

If that fish thing is the new UI, I have to say that I preferred the old one, less is more.

[Sven Johannsen]

The video at the site gives a better demo than any screen shots. Funny it is not in wma :)

[JJ]

The video at the site gives a better demo than any screen shots. Funny it is not in wma :)
Could you provide the URL to the video?

[rkrosen]

Could you provide the URL to the video?

Here it is (55 MB).
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens/UIST%202002%20-%20fishcal.mpg

[Jeff Rutledge]

Could you provide the URL to the video?

Here it is (55 MB).
http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/datelens/UIST%202002%20-%20fishcal.mpg

Definitely watch the video. Screenshots can't tell the story. It's pretty cool actually.

[daveshih]

Definitely, watch the video. It may take quite a while to download, but it's well worth it. "A video is worth a thousand screenshots!"

The "fish-eye" technology is very cool and workable - expanding your current selection and minimizing others. The expanding-shrinking scroll bar is also very, very innovative.

Can't wait for the download.

A side note, since it's written using C#, which runs on .Net, does that mean that I'll need to install the .Net for Pocket PC?

Dave

[Steven Cedrone]

Definitely, watch the video. It may take quite a while to download, but it's well worth it. "A video is worth a thousand screenshots!"

I don't know if it was just me but I had a problem when I ran the video from the site. When I downloaded it, it worked fine...

The "fish-eye" technology is very cool and workable - expanding your current selection and minimizing others. The expanding-shrinking scroll bar is also very, very innovative.

Can't wait for the download.

I agree, this looks very promising. I was skeptical at first, but this interface looks very complete and well thought out...

Steve

[jerrytroll]

This looks promising. I wonder if this is a sign that .NET and WinCE.NET aren't too far off for the PPC

[jerrytroll]

oooh....at the end of the video "This should be running on Pocket PC shortly, and we expect to make it available for download then" :D

[JonnoB]

I was very skeptical at first with the UI, but after watching the video, I was sold. Simple, yet very well thought out and I can see where it will have productivity gains for me. Very cool.

[Jason Dunn]

Very interesting - it's very much something that needs to be used to be understood (a simple screen shot doesn't do it justice). I like the search function too - very useful database tapping.

[Ed Hansberry]

I was very skeptical at first with the UI, but after watching the video, I was sold. Simple, yet very well thought out and I can see where it will have productivity gains for me. Very cool.

I too am all over this one. It won't do away with Pocket Informant's Agenda View, but after seeing that, Month View is going to take a back seat to DateLens.

[JMountford]

OK the Screen Shots were very misleading. I had to download the video to get it to work. This looks promising.

[Ed Hansberry]

OK the Screen Shots were very misleading. I had to download the video to get it to work. This looks promising.
This thing definitely needs some shockwave attention or at the very least some big animated GIFs. Static screenshots are worthless for this app.

[Brad Adrian]

Definitely looks pretty cool. For me, one of the greatest difficulties with performing scheduling on my Pocket PC is the constant scrolling and view-switching I have to do. This tool looks like it could take care of all that, assuming performance is nearly as quick as shown on the video.

[dunneldeen]

I will definatly download this one, it looks very promising. Just when you think the third-party vendors have found the answers, someone comes out with a new one.

[JonathanWardRogers]

This looks suspiciously like "Dasher" - the alternative input method. Definitely cool, but I think this should be extended to the rest of Outlook as well.

[Sslixtis]

Whew! I'm glad I watched the video, this looks awesome. Just looking at the screenshots I was thinking "Oh, no too much clutter. Less is More!" But after watching the video, I think FishCal has moved to the top of my software wish list.

I was starting to sound like a Palm user there for a second! Less is More, Less is More, Less is More. You know that has a bizarre kinda ring to it that almost lulls you into believing it :wink:

[crashdau]

Ok. You can't get a full understanding until you view the video. Really excited to download this one when it is available. Soon I hope! I wonder if it will work as well as it did on the PC in the video?
It is the most comprehensice attack on the calendar I've seen in a long time.

[Jeff Rutledge]

I'd say there's a bit of a buzz about this app. Jason et al: Please be sure to keep an eye open for a release (even beta) of this puppy. I'll definitely check it out.

[Ed Hansberry]

I'd say there's a bit of a buzz about this app. Jason et al: Please be sure to keep an eye open for a release (even beta) of this puppy. I'll definitely check it out.
It is definitely on my favorites list I check every few days. First one to see it released and contacts us get a mention on the front page! Fame and fortune all yours! :lol:

[Pony99CA]

The video looked interesting, but I'd be happy if the Calendar added two new features:

* List View -- A chronological list of all of your appointments. This is useful for finding appointments and deleting old ones. There is a third-party application that does this, but it should be integrated into the Calendar.

* More Informative Year View -- A method of indicating which dates in the Year View have appointments. Perhaps using reverse video for the dates that have appointments would be enough. The months that would take six lines and have the "/" for two days would be a bit more difficult; maybe the upper left half of the date would be reversed for the earlier day and the lower right would be reversed for the day the week later.

Steve

[Ed Hansberry]

The video looked interesting, but I'd be happy if the Calendar added two new features:

* List View -- A chronological list of all of your appointments. This is useful for finding appointments and deleting old ones. There is a third-party application that does this, but it should be integrated into the Calendar.
I want PI to license this thing for Month view. Then I could use AV for the list view. :)

[tregnier]

I downloaded it and gave it a try. While I like it a lot and can see it being very helpful, it is S L O W, S L O W, ....SLOW. It takes forever to load the software and then there's the appointments. I'm using the trial version. From the time I tapped the icon to open, tapped OK for proceeding with trial, to appointments loaded and screen filled: 42 seconds on iPaq h3955. Too long for me to wait.

[fulltilt]

I saw a piece of software that managed jpg from the digital camera that worked in a similar method. You could present all files in the library with tiny icons, then hit the library view and it would blow only those up that were related to the library.

Has anyone seen this software?

[Mark R Penn]

Yep:

http://www.windsorinterfaces.com/photomesa.shtml