The date entry scheme in Android, with its scrolling vertical numbers, is consistent with its time entry. But often I really miss a simple calendar approach. Yes, it's not difficult to say three weeks from today is the same as adding 21 modulo whatever the current month's length is - but selecting (for instance) the third Thursday of February of next year isn't really feasible with the current entry method (unless you memorize Conway's Doomsday Algorithm).
Any suggestions? Time for me to dive into Android code to write a freebie extension?
Jim Horn, Hood River, Oregon USA
You could always scroll through the months on the actual calendar.
True, but that means leaving the date entry field and the whole appointment you've already started entering, going back to calendar (vs agenda) view, scrolling around to find the information, going back to agenda view, reselecting what you've started entering, then entering what you've hopefully not forgotten while doing all this.
All of which defeats the purpose of having a computer in the phone to help you out rather than get in the way. In Outlook / Palm / etc. when you need to select a date you get the calendar view immediately and you tap the appropriate date. Simpler, faster and easier than vertical scrolling ribbons.
No offense, but I really don't see what is so hard about selecting the date before entering information. All seems pretty intuitive to me.
Related
DeveloperOne released V7.50 of AgendaFusion for WM5 on 1st Dec. I haven't seen it mentioned in these forums. Anybody got any feedback about it?
I'm just about to try it:
http://www.developerone.com/agendafusion/download.htm#wm5
Hmm. First impressions: not good.
Contacts are displayed and I can search for them. I can't use the keyboard to dial a contact's number. Gotta use the stylus. This is enough reason to ditch the software IMHO. Can't use the keyboard to find and dial a number while in the car?? :shock: This is one strength of the built-in WM5 contacts app., which is actually pretty good.
AF calendar doesn't show a single appointment, of any kind. :shock: Weird. Can't find anything in the settings to show/hide certain types of appointment, so I don't know what's going on. Tasks are all displayed OK though. I added an appointment in AF and it appears in my sync'ed calendar on the desktop, but doesn't show on the Exec.
Can't use the keyboard to navigate the calendar or switch calendar view tab. So can't navigate to a day and start a new appointment without getting the stylus out. (For many people this won't be a problem, but it indicates to me that it's not fully compatible with our Universals. If they left out this possibility then what else didn't they consider?) Up/down keyboard buttons do nothing as far as I can tell. Why the hell not?
The screen through which you add an appointment is broken in VGA mode. Unbelievable :roll: There's an unlabelled time input field orphaned in whitespace near the bottom of the screen. I've no idea what it refers to.
No soft-key tabs at the bottom of the screen for common tasks. :shock: This isn't a feature unique to the Universal: The soft-key input option is standard to WM5! Why haven't they used it, or at least offered the possibility?
So I'm not happy with AgendaFusion. This is a pity - I loved it on my XDA2. I had hoped that the long-overdue release of their "WM5-compatible" version meant that it'd be the killer PIM, but it offers nothing that PocketInformant doesn't offer, and PI was released weeks ago. What have DeveloperOne been doing?
I've been beta testing AF for a while and I am very happy. I use the Project Management feature a lot. Not had any problems with appointments.
Short version:
I got a little out of hand with this post, so a quick summary:
I'm looking for a developer for, or a PIM application which keeps custom set variables on the today screen, with easy access to modifying them, and in addition allows automatic calculations based on these variables, which can also be displayed on the today screen. Idealy, these numbers can be stored in a calendar interface whenever they are modified to make it easier to see their progression over time, but this is not essential. I can donate around 20 dollars to start.
Long Version:
I'm essentially looking to replace a tool that I have used for far to long, that takes up much more space than my phone. I am willing to donate to anyone willing to make this sort of app, but all in all, I think it's something everyone can benefit from.
I have this 'Pink Book' that I use to keep track of things, eating habits, spending habits, something I might need to be doing every day, etc. To do this, every day I will draw out a box and put the things from the day inside. What I weighed in, progressively added calories, if I exercised, if I spent more than 25 dollars on something, how much money I should have in my bank account, how many hours I was actually clocked in at work; you get the drift. I'd like to get rid of this book in favor of software.
The general idea would to be able to set an (infinite) number of variables with certain properties, and display them on the today screen. This application would need some sort of calendar backend. Idealy, a calander view could display numbers over the day based on a variable selected from a dropdown above the calendar.
These are the types of things that we would want this app to support.
Creating a variable:
~A variable~
Variable name:_______
Short name:____ (for calculations or today screen)
Icon:___ Associate an icon with the stat for the calendar and today screen, I can make stock icons for this.
Initial ammount:______
Type: (Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Yearly, Infinite, etc: this determines, how often this variable is reset to the starting ammount; however, the data is always kept and stored on days that it is changed for review. This option exists for the sake of counts such as hours exercised in a day, bus rides in a month, bill payments in a month etc.)
Show on today? X
Meter? X (Display a meter on the today screen with a maximum and minimum)
Meter Maximum:___
Meter Minimum:___
Plus/Minus? (Plus,Minus,Both,None : A quick button that would appear next to the variable on the today screen, for quick addition or subtraction to the variable.)
Ammount: (The ammount that the quick buttons would move the plus and minus keys. for example, quickly adding 400 calories to a calorie counter, as the average small meal.)
~A note~
This would use the calendar backend to keep a note in your stats screen. A daily task or reminder. Or, we could also add more functions to the variable interface to make up for this, such as hiding a stat on the today screen if it meets a certain maximum; so a note would instead be a variable that displays no number, starts at 0, and will disapear if we make it 1. Example uses, pay the bill for this month; have you exercised today?; I guess this functionality is in WM tasks, but it would be nice to have in a central app.
~A calculation~
For advanced things, such as multiple bank account balances, here we could have something that is not recorded on every change, but will use simple math, addition, subtraction, devision, multiplication, to solve certain things that you might need to know often. For example, we stack these together to make a calculation for 'Your Next Paycheck' by making one calculation 'weekly pay bt(hours worked*current pay) and using this calculation with (weekly pay bt*.66) to adjust for Income Tax. Short names would be used for calculations.
Modifying a variable:
Idealy, the plus and minus buttons for the today plugin should be sufficient for every day use, but there are times when we need to get nitty gritty and change things thoroughly and precisely, plus and minus don't always work for that, so by taping the variable on the today screen, we should have a popup or full window for entering the exact ammount. we can use this as a place for a finger friendly dialog as well, by using a simple calculator style interface.
+,- 1234567890 <-. If plus or minus is not defined, it will set the absolute number.
While the calendar function is not entirely necessary, it would be helpful, but overall, the only things that matter are the ability to set a number to a name, calculate variables, and have a number reset after a certain repetition.
I can put down about 20 dollars at the moment, but I hope someone can whip something up or find something like this, as I'm sure the core idea of this is something that EVERYONE can use to keep track of SOMETHING. :3
Thank you for your time!
I've got an appointment set up in Outlook on the PC for 7pm-11:30pm this evening.
When I synchronised, the home screen on the HD says "Tomorrow 19:00 - 23:30" instead of "Today"
If I tap the appointment on the home screen to enter the calendar program, it correctly shows under today's date, with nothing tomorrow.
Possible bug in TouchFlo ?
Anyone else seen this ?
Or am I being really dumb and missing something obvious ?
EDIT : After a soft reset, the word "tomorrow" vanishes. So it looks like TouchFlo failed to update the home screen properly until the device was reset.
my bug is different
I have a different bug, no mine doesnt seem to do what you say... as far as I can see...
My bug is that when you set in options to always display day, week or month view and you quit calendar and start it again, bang it goes back to Agenda view (which is rubbish)... is there a fix to get it to stay in what its asked to stay in.
truthseekers said:
I have a different bug, no mine doesnt seem to do what you say... as far as I can see...
My bug is that when you set in options to always display day, week or month view and you quit calendar and start it again, bang it goes back to Agenda view (which is rubbish)... is there a fix to get it to stay in what its asked to stay in.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm seeing the same thing. When selecting the calendar or appointment from touchflo it always takes you to the agenda view as opposed to the default view you select in the calendar.
bugsy said:
I'm seeing the same thing. When selecting the calendar or appointment from touchflo it always takes you to the agenda view as opposed to the default view you select in the calendar.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I was having the same issue.
I needed to reset my device (Pressing power button until it gives the pop up to turn off) and once it came back now it is working fine..
I can set it which way I want now and the setting is sticking...
...and more:
I got all of them... calender always opening in agenda view, a TOMORROW instead of a TODAY until reset, AND another one: IF you activate lets say THREE alarms, only the first one shows up on the today screen, no matter what time it is... So if it the first alarm is over, my Touch ELF's display would change to show to the next open one, but the HD does NOT. Ridiculous...
I see 4 every day all the call.!?Sync by activesync.How to delette this sync?
I too am bothered with this problem.
I want my calendar view set to Month view. So I've choosen Month view form the options and everything seems OK. However, everytime I choose calendar from the home screen it briefly starts in Month view, and then opens the agenda view.
I've tried everything I could find on the net to solve this problem, including:
- Adjusting the calendar to month view and afterwards soft-resetting my HD. Still the same problem.
- Adding -vm to the shortcut in the calendar shortcuts in the Windows directory and in the Windows/Startup directory. this opens the calendar in month view, but from the Home screen still no success.
- Searching the registry for relevant settings, but i'm not knowledgeable enough yet to find the correct ones.
By the way, if I set my calendar view to Day or Week, the same type of problem occurs.
Since I really don't like the Agenda view this really starts to annoy me.
Any other thoughts out there on something I could try?
Regards, Jack
i have the same problem! does anyone know abetter more fingerfriendly calendar program with tf3d integration?
Deixi
Strange stuff...
I don't have the problem everybody describes, but instead next day appointments show with a DS_TOMORROW: prefix instead of Tomorrow: The font is big and it occupies quite a lot of space, looks buggy and pretty annoying.
With regard to a finger friendly calendar - I used Agenda One, but it doesn't work from TF3D Home screen by default - the link needs to be edited, and I can't find the thread where the way to do it was described.
With regard to opening the calendar in the "right" view, it should be relatively easy to fix.
Searching the registry won't help because the links in RF3D seem to be hardcoded - this is the bad news.
The good news is that there's a Manila Patcher which allows to change things. If you know the arguments (somebody mentioned -vm), you can change those.
With regard to today's events prefixed with "Tomorrow", it seems that this is indeed a Manila bug, it just doesn't refresh data. You don't have to reset the device, disabling and enabling Manila is enough. This is not a workaround of course, because resetting is actualy easier, just to reiterate that TF3D is at fault.
Not 100% sure, but if I'm using the device around midnight then TF3D doesn't roll the appointments. If I'm not then it does.
Could be a complete red-herring though. . .
Does HTC have any bug tracking system available for the public, at least for submitting bugs?
Thanks for the tip on SSMaPa vangrieg!
Installed it, added "-vm" in the arguments box belonging to calendar.exe, and after some messages I am now enjoying my calendar in glorious Month view!
And before I forget, the other possible arguments are: -vd for Day view, -vw for Week view, -vy for Year view and of course -va for the dreaded Agenda view
By the way, this is what HTC Support mailed me after just one day's wait:
In order to solve your problem, you will need to hardreset your device. All data and settings will be deleted, so please back-up all your data first. Remove your SIM and memory card and go to Start, Settings, System, Clear Storage and follow the on-screen instructions.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Might try that some day, but for now this seems to be werking fine!
Regards, Jack
fasty said:
I've got an appointment set up in Outlook on the PC for 7pm-11:30pm this evening.
When I synchronised, the home screen on the HD says "Tomorrow 19:00 - 23:30" instead of "Today"
If I tap the appointment on the home screen to enter the calendar program, it correctly shows under today's date, with nothing tomorrow.
Possible bug in TouchFlo ?
Anyone else seen this ?
Or am I being really dumb and missing something obvious ?
EDIT : After a soft reset, the word "tomorrow" vanishes. So it looks like TouchFlo failed to update the home screen properly until the device was reset.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I too have this problem, and the thing at fault here is apparently the Touch Flo 3D interface. Just as described in the original post, the calendar app itself displays everything correctly, but on the Today Screen in Touch Flo, "tomorrow" entries do not change over to "today entries" when the date changes, i.e. it fails to update.
A soft reset does indeed correct the problem, but it is also sorted out if you change the calendar content in some way. This morning, for instance, I made a simple edit (changed the location variable) in one of the entries, and PRESTO! - the entries on the Today screen were properly presented.
Now, I'm not a programmer, but it seems to me that the Today screen doesn't recognise a date change as something that should trigger an update. Shouldn't it be able to force this somehow?
Speaking about Calendars, does anyone know how to change the text color of the topic while on the TFLO3D home screen.
It is a grey color and it makes it impossible to read.
Hi there, I have the same bug with Touch Flo, but no need to reset the phone. Just go in Start / Settings / Today, untick Touch Flo, do OK, this closes the Touch Flo applications. Then rego there to tick Touch Flo, this runs Touch Flo with the right information.
HTC advised me to hard-reset the device. The problem continues.
Soft resetting touch-flo does seem to cure the problem of the immediate appointment, but it is not a permanent fix.
- Steve
I have another bug in the calendar of the Touch HD.
When I create an all-day event with a reminder, it just doesn't remind me : no ring, no vibe, just the screen that is switched on, and the pop-up appear. But it works fine with a regular appointment. Do you have the same bug ?
I don't know about you guys but i wanted to test this out so i entered some false appointments for 3 days in a row and i'm on the 2nd day and it has worked wonderfully.
It doesn't say 'today' but the top rows are showing today and has 'tomorrow' for the the appointment tomorrow.
I waited till midnight and it did roll over.
Or is this problem only via syncing from Outlook or something?
I have entered a few bogus meetings for the next day on the phone itself to test out your theory and on midnight the Tomorrow tag simply stayed there.
So once again I have no idea what triggers the bug.
so, I've been playing for most of the day, and it is certainly going to take some getting used to, however there are a couple of 'weird things'
1) if I reset my phone, and leave it powered up..after a minute or so, it goes to the alarm page..not everytime, but maybe 3 out of 5 times....very odd
2) when I get a new text and hit the tab, it doesn't take me to the new text, it takes me to the last conversation I was having (and I can't find a way to turn off the threaded sms, which I hate)
3) I'm not a fan of the contact page. I prefer to have a choice of what I do when clicking a contact image (send a text, call mobile, send email etc) and I can only set one option.
can HTC sense be disabled? so I could maybe install SPB Mobile Shell, just to see if I get on better with it
On the contacts page you should be able to click the contact name and it will open the contact instead of the default action...
Hi,
1 - I don't get
2 - I do get - weird!
3 - When you add a contact, the top option is to show the contact card. This gives you the choices you want.
even though I dont have it yet ... yes you can disable manila and use ex. SPB
sometimes when i lock my screen on the homepage, on unlocking it opens up a random tab, the calendar for example.
holding instead of tapping will open the contact instead of performing the default action.
Yes SPB can be installed, it's one of the first things I did. It's ridiculous the amount of shortcuts you are allowed to put on the default home screen, plus it takes longer to navigate than SPB (I don't use most of the tabs on the default, otherwise it could be good).
I think I'm going to try it then. I've always used Mobile Shell (for the past 3 years), but HTC Sense looked so good I figured it would be the thing to keep me away from SPB.
and some of the things are amazing, the animated weather is stunning, but some of the other things are just odd, and difficult to navigate.
might persevere with it...might not
A suggestion from someone who still doesn't have the HD2...I plan to stick with HTC's interface for 2 weeks, no matter what. I'm sure I'll be muttering under my breath a lot in the first few days. But since it's a radical change from my TyTN II and Spb Mobile Shell combo, I figure I should try to adjust my approach to the HD2 design. If, after 2 weeks, I'm still muttering to myself, I'll turn off HTC's interface and go back to Spb's. I set the same parameters when I switched from my PDA to the TyTN II, with a goal of reducing my use of a stylus to the absolute minimum. It was frustrating, but after a couple weeks (that was 2 years ago) I almost totally stopped using a stylus. Just proves you CAN teach an old dog new tricks.
That's my word for the day.
-Bob-
I am looking for a calendar/planner that allows me to view on a week by week basis. One that will allow me to see the week and all the appointments for the week.
If you dont know what I mean, then think about a filofax page that has the week displyed and the commtiments written in.
Any ideas?
Thanks in advance
dunno if i get it..but if you change the calendar(stock htc calendar) to week view and choose agenda from menu, it will show almost this...
It almost does what I need, but I am unable to see the detail [words] in the week view, I would arther be able to see the week graphically with each appointment readable, rather than swap between two different views.
Of course when I swap from week view to agenda and back again, it defaults to month view and I have to go back into settings to get back to week view.
Not ideal, however I am grateful for the suggestion.
Hi,
I'm using Jorte (free app), and it's very good. All details are readable and has nice widgets.
It syncs with Google calendar also.
Give it a try
I use Pure calendar and it sorts my home screen out into a monthly diary and the best thing is you can choose the size
h tt p:// ww w.androlib.com/android.application.org-koxx-pure_calendar-qmwt.aspx
remove the spaces and thats what i used