Calendar user interface - too small and crammed

[WildEnte]

First off, thanks for integrating the calendar in Vivaldi, I'm very happy with where Vivaldi is going!

I notice how I am somewhat frustrated with the calendar user interface when creating and modifying events. The design is too minimalistic. There is so much space available, yet the dialog to add/edit an event is crammed into the space of a day or timeslot (still forcing the row of days to rescale to fit it in). To edit the time of an event, I have to use the keyboard.

In direct comparison, the webmail interface of vivaldi.net is a LOT cleaner, looks more friendly, and I believe I get same functionality.

As an aside, I really dislike the "feature" of setting a start of day / end of day. Please don't reinvent the wheel.

Vivaldi Browser calendar

Vivaldi.net Web Calendar

[LonM]

There is an option to enable a pop-up event editor instead of the in-line one. Does that help with usability?

[WildEnte]

@LonM thanks, I should have found that setting on my own. Much, much better, but I think still over the top minimalistic by a large amount.

Usually when we talk about browser or email interfaces, it's all about "not getting in the way" of the website or email content. But in case of the calendar, the new entry IS the content, so that minimalistic browser UI design mantra just makes the thing less accessible. It's where I want to get the job done. There is so much space available, why not use it?

Again, for comparison I point to the vivaldi.net webmail calendar. So much more ... inviting.

Also, please give time entries a dropdown menu so I don't have to switch between mouse and keyboard.

Lastly, thanks for the great work. Please don't read this like a rant, I want to be constructive here .

[LonM]

@WildEnte Your feedback is very constructive . I've had access to the calendar for a while as a tester, so I'm a bit blinded when it comes to the design. Having more feedback is always helpful.

It should be possible to access everything via keyboard without the mouse by using the ↹ key. If that doesn't work then something might be broken.

[eggert]

@WildEnte Thanks a lot for the feedback, it is most welcome.

We have been focusing on making the calendar fully keyboard accessible and I guess that some obvious things related to using the mouse have been missed, f.ex. time input like you point out. There is a way though, albeit a little unintuitive, for most hardware. If you click one of the numbers in a time field to focus it you can use scroll wheel of the mouse to change values. But this should be improved and I have made a ticket in our tracker.

The reasoning for the minimalistic editor is the theory that most of the time one only needs to put in a title and a time for an event and it should be as simple and quick as possible. And we find it helpful that the new event does not block the other things on your calendar for overview when editing. We realise that it is not for everyone and have therefor added the option to use a dialog. I guess that one could be expanded to make more options available and discoverable. It is true that there is in most cases a lot of space available on the screen for it.

Regarding the feature of start / end of day, could you elaborate a bit? What do you mean to not reinvent the wheel? We do have the option to turn that off so the full 24 hours of the day will show.

Thanks for the constructive feedback and I am glad to hear you like the calendar, hope we can make it more useful for you.

[atlemo]

Thanks for the feedback.
As Eggert points out, the reasoning for doing it like this is being able to quickly add events.
But, the moment you want to edit an event, or add more details I agree it's not optimal. We have some more work to do there.

Additionally, we will add a welcome-step (setup) to the calendar before this goes out as Final, where the user will be presented with the two choices (inline or popup) in a more clear way, letting them take a choice.

[WildEnte]

@eggert and @atlemo thanks for the replies. I understand better now why you set it up the way it is. I'm a mouse person so the keyboard accessibility hadn't occurred to me, that works really well actually!

• Not blocking things for overview when editing: Reasonable argument. I work a LOT with my calendar at work as my work life (sadly) consists of 85% meetings. From my experience when setting up a new meeting, you first navigate to the day when you intend to have the meeting or your appointment and then click on the spot where it fits best - now the existing appointments on all OTHER days are not as important and can be blocked, but you can argue that the day you chose should still be visible to avoid appointment collisions. This could be done by opening the dialog inline (your default choice), opening a dialog left or right of the day that is used, or displaying the chosen day in the dialog.

• Start of day / End of day: I only now realize you apparently fixed VB-74688 (thanks) where appointments outside of the working hours were not shown at on the day calendar. You also added the option not to collapse out of day hours - both very welcome. Not sure I understand the need to set day hours for myself outside of a collaborative setting where others can see my preferred hours (so I don't accidentally schedule sth for my pasttime?). I personally would prefer that out of day hours are "greyed out" or otherwise visually distinguished instead of just gone

• no need to reinvent the wheel: I love how M2 & M3 are different than other mailers, because it solves a real problem (that of email flood management without folders). You can debate on what the established standard for "how a calendar typically works" is - I would take the calendars of webmail.vivaldi.com and gmail as reasonable examples. They and many other calendars I've tried in the past open a large, immediately inviting and accessible looking dialog (covering lots of calendar space, among them usually the day that I want to place my appointment in). This works well. Using Vivaldi for the first time I was put off by being very different with the inline editing style, even the dialog is still rather small - and contrary to the case of Vivaldi mail I really do not see any advantage by handling things different than the established standard.

Vivaldi is supposed to be all about me, the user (ok maybe not ME specifically, maybe ... ) It would be really interesting to learn what kind of user you are primarily targeting - otherwise I'll always just rant about how I want things, and I may just not be a good representative of the target group. No worries I'll stay loyal to Vivaldi, you brought everythig I loved about Opera back

[LonM]

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