Mimi Yin wrote:
+ In the calendar area, it makes sense to display 'Today's events'
because users can see the events on the seleted mini-calendar day in
the main-calendar area. This also allows people to keep an eye on
'Today's' events while their browsing around the calendar.
+ In the non-calendar app areas, the preview-pane is a great way to
navigate around the calendar without actually having to switch context.
So "today's events" is really "selected day's events" when not in
Calendar, but only "today's events" when in Calendar? I can see the
benefit of doing this, but it also seems inconsistent. I actually never
knew about the functionality when not in Calendar, even though I've used
Chandler every day for the past five months or so. (I also follow the
mailing list, and although I vaguely remember the discussion you
mention, I thought the preview is stuck on today in all app areas. I
thought it was really always just "Today's events" and that minical was
mainly used for easier navigation of the main calendar canvas.)
+ In the All app area, the Dashboard displays Today's events as alarms
fire and start-times pass.
Sorry, where is this displayed? In the minical preview or just floated
to the top as Now?
+ Not all events will show up in the Task and Mail app areas, but I
don't expect users to be 'sitting' in those app areas. However that is
just my supposition. Do you find yourself spending long stretches of
time in those areas?
I do. I use collections as GTD contexts, more or less, and for such
usage the task list is where I am when I'm trying to decide what to do
next. (Note: not the Dashboard, but a specific collection's task list.)
+ As for showing Today's Tasks, I wonder if a better solution might
not be to 'tickle' items into the NOW section at the beginning of the
day, rather than at a particular alarm time and/or start time.
For the time being, I get what I need (seeing tasks in the sidebar
preview) by stamping tasks as anytime events on the day they're due. I
think the functionality that you describe is already there if you set
"anytime" tickler on a task. (Or maybe it will be, once bug 7711 is
fixed.) The way I see it, if I don't need to worry about an event until
the evening, there is no need to have it clutter my preview area or the
Now section. If I did care about it, I would set an advance (or even
anytime) alarm.
To conclude, now that I know the full functionality of the minical and
the preview, I'm sure I'll find times when it comes in very handy. And
it looks like I should try to rely more on the Dashboard to manage my
tasks. But seeing a sea of green in my Now section just feels more
overwhelming than if I could see in the "Today's events" just the 2-3
tasks really due today. (This may get better when switch to 0.7a5 with
its date-based autotriage.)
Davor
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