Re: [Design] [Proposal] Preview area

[Mimi Yin]

I'm going through the design list trying to wrap up some threads that never reached a definitive conclusion. We've explored a number of options with how to make the Preview pane in the Mini-cal less confusing and more useful. In the interest of having something usable, sooner rather than later, I propose that we: Not make any huge changes from what we have today, so instead we: 1. Allow the Preview pane to display more events. This can be achieved in several ways, we should do whatever is easiest: + Allow as many events as there is room in the sidebar (as in without obscuring collections) + Allow as many events as there is room in the sidebar (as in leaving at least enough sidebar to display OOTB collections + 2 user-defined collections) + Allow a larger set number of events (e.g. 10) + Insert a splitter between the Preview Pane and Mini-cal and let the user decide how much real estate the Preview Pane should take up (Adds visual clutter to the sidebar, unless we can implement a custom splitter that's just a single pixel line.) 2. Title the Preview pane: Today's events 3. Nice to have: Make it possible to navigate to an event on the Calendar by clicking on an event in the Preview Pane (from any App area). Comments? Mimi :o) On Apr 14, 2006, at 11:18 AM, Mimi Yin wrote: I have written up a summary of the design discussions surrounding the Preview area (bug 4610) PLUS 1 more suggestion for a design alternative. http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/edit/Journal/SummaryPreviewPane?t=1145037939 I'd like to get a sense of how easy/hard it would be to try out any/all of the proposals and compare them after using each one over a period of time. Summary of Preview Pane discussions and Proposals Several people report a bug because they are confused with the Preview Pane's inconsistent behavior across App areas. In the Calendar app, it is stuck showing Today's events. In the other App areas, it shows events for whatever day is selected in the mini-cal: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-March/004298.html Mimi takes issue to the list, explaining reasoning behind inconsistent behavior: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-February/004051.html Others reply with how they use the Preview Pane in the Calendar App, it is useful for it to be stuck on Today's events, even though admittedly it is confusing at first: http://lists.osafoundation.org/pipermail/design/2006-March/004298.html Proposals    * Current design: In the Calendar app, the preview pane is stuck showing Today's events. In the other App areas, it shows events for whatever day is selected in the mini-cal.    * Alternate design 1: Make the Calendar app consistent with the other App areas. Add extra visual feedback in the mini-cal so the user can select a day within a week...when they're in the week view, so the user can control which day of the week they want to see in the Preview pane.    * Alternate design 2: In the Calendar app, we add a label: Today's events at the top of the Preview pane.    * Alternate design 3: In all Apps areas, the Preview pane is stuck on Today's events. However, the user can mouseover different days to preview events for those days. (Might be too much interaction feedback. More disorienting than useful.) Mimi :o) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Open Source Applications Foundation "Design" mailing list http://lists.osafoundation.org/mailman/listinfo/design

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