7 ms·

Logarithmic calendar view

200 points by epe 16y ago

d0m 16y ago
I simply love this idea. I wanted to create a calendar app and I'll clearly remember your idea if I have the time to do my project.
ambition 16y ago
So obvious, but only in retrospect. This is insight at its best.
- nandemo 16y ago
  It is so "obvious" that it would be very easy to "steal" the idea and not give credit to Marco. After all, you could always say you had the idea independently.
  - tsally 16y ago
    Unless you are doing cutting edge research, it's impossible to verify an idea you've invented independently is truly original or not. Even then, there's no guarantee (see: Newton and Leibniz). So I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.
    - nandemo 16y ago
      Oh, I was merely emphasizing ambition's point in a roundabout, non-serious way (I'm not suggesting that people don't give credit to Marco). I don't agree that it's impossible to know if an idea is original or not. For instance, on one extreme, if 2 composers published a very similar concerto at about the same time, it would be assumed one of them plagiarized the other. On the other extreme, if you're working on an arithmetic problem and there's only one answer, then of course no one would be accused of plagiarism.
lotharbot 16y ago
Seems like an idea worthy of some testing and tweaking. I could go for a 3-column (or row, depending on display type) calendar, where the first column shows today in detail, the second column shows the next week in lesser detail, and the final column shows the next month in even less detail. Perhaps clicking on a given day would bring that day into the first column and adjust the rest of the calendar accordingly. A big fat "today" button and arrows to skip by day/week/month would be fantastic. (As the OP says, a better artist would mock this up. I am not a better artist. Sorry.)
megamark16 16y ago
I recently found and implemented a nice jQuery calendar plugin called FullCalendar in a client site I'm working on. It was terribly easy to integrate into the site thanks to Django. I think I'm going to tinker with it now to see if I can get it to use this type of display as a view option, since it already offers different view options.
- tzury 16y ago
  don't forget to publish your results ;-)
spuz 16y ago
Google Calendar has an Agenda view which simply shows your upcoming events as an ordered list. I use this as my default view and use the monthly view when scheduling new events.
jasonfried 16y ago
The Backpack Calendar has a default 6 week view with the current week at the top. The only way to see previous weeks is to expressly go back in time. Otherwise, you're always looking at this week + 5 more weeks ahead. http://backpackit.com/calendar http://backpackit.com/calendar
- nkh 16y ago
  That covers the first point of the article. Anything available for the second and third points? I don’t care about present-and-future items with equal granularity. I wouldn’t mind seeing today in an hour-by-hour view, but I don’t need the same granularity when showing events three days from now. If I switch to a more granular view for today, I lose the ability to see any of what’s happening next week.
- tsally 16y ago
  Offtopic: Any plans to allow custom repeating schemes like MWF, TR, or whatever? Basically the only reason I canceled my Backpack account and I'd really like to subscribe again.
- necubi 16y ago
  Google Calendar, too, has a very useful three week view which does the same thing.
  - vdm 16y ago
    Not enough for me. I would really appreciate being able to adjust the number of weeks (3-6) to show. The view should show 1 week past and the rest future, regardless of the current time of month, and have continuous rather than chunked scrolling.
3ds 16y ago
maybe like this mockup i just made? http://create.ly/g7qpwcay1 http://create.ly/g7qpwcay1
- wallflower 16y ago
  Reminds me of Martin Wattenberg's SmartMoney Map of the Market http://www.bewitched.com/marketmap.html http://www.bewitched.com/marketmap.html
- growt 16y ago
  looks a bit like oursignal.com, or like a treemap in general
- Raphael 16y ago
  Why are weekends half-size?
  - seabee 16y ago
    to reflect work-weeks?
    - greendestiny 16y ago
      To reflect how quickly they seem to pass.
- lotharbot 16y ago
  I like it. Here are some suggestions for anyone expanding this idea: - make each of the main boxes a little bit narrower so you can have a full week (1+6) in the top section, and a full second week (including full-sized weekend days) across the bottom - make the "flow" obvious somehow. A thicker line separating the top boxes from the bottom would help. Slightly darker or lighter background colors as you get farther from "today" would help as well. - squeeze in navigation controls: a big "today" button, and forward/backward day and week arrows (in the day and week areas). - the very bottom right box could be replaced with "upcoming", and list off anything marked as a priority in the next few weeks after the end of this display.
inrev 16y ago
The Agenda view in Emacs's org-mode has similar ideas. In the week view you see great detail for the current day and a short overview of the days to come. Here is a screen-shot I found online: http://tiny.cc/3gwoj http://tiny.cc/3gwoj
reduxredacted 16y ago
Fantastic idea, though I noted that the author said "I work the same schedule every weekday and I rarely meet with people.", which is something I can't relate to. I meet with a lot of people, regularly. From my perspective: - Last week is important on Monday ... but only on Monday. I do a quick review/plan for the following week and I use data from the previous week for accountability purposes -- as in: Did I deliver on action items from the previous week? I like to get that out of the way on Monday morning so as not to have it hanging over my head the rest of the week. - Some appointments and meetings are more important or come with greater consequences if missed. The day view is dead on, but I'd expand it to be a pad of "Day View" (a.k.a. What's Important hour by hour) at the top with starred items beneath. For instance, my Dentist charges $75 if an appointment is canceled with less than three days notice (this is never enforced, but his time is important, too). My current method is to set a reminder four days before. Once I receive the reminder, I validate that I can make the appointment and reset it to remind me 1 day before hand so that I can cancel anything else that is short-notice that conflicts, then I reset the reminder to 20 minutes prior so that I get off my duff and drive to the Dentist office. I have a similar kludge for important meetings or ones that require a great deal of prep work. Since I check my calendar constantly, I could avoid all of this nonsense if it was just sitting under a thick line beneath my "Day View" as a constant reminder.
MikeTLive 16y ago
this idea was posted a few months ago and I can not find it. anyone have references to it?
- stuartjmoore 16y ago
  http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030989 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030989
  - stuartjmoore 16y ago
    Just so I don't look like a dick: I don't think he stole my idea. We actually emailed back and forth a while ago (started about something else, calendars came up). People have the same ideas at the same time. It's always nice to get another perspective.
- jackowayed 16y ago
  http://imsoocd.com/2010/01/04/calendars/ http://imsoocd.com/2010/01/04/calendars/
kentosi 16y ago
I can't access google calendar at the moment (at work), but when I use it i have it in a view that only shows the next 7 days. This ticks one of the boxes this guy's talking about. As for having an expanded view of today, and a reducing detail view of the following days ... that's a great idea i think.
- vtail 16y ago
  You know you can go to https://www.google.com/calendar/render https://www.google.com/calendar/render? Google Calendar is also blocked where I work, but using https does the trick.
  - kentosi 16y ago
    i would give you 10 mod points if i could. thankyou so much for letting me plan my life again.
jazzychad 16y ago
Maybe I'm the only one, but I have a mental picture of my calendar using the upper-right quadrant of a Cartesian Plane. Days are on the X axis, Hours are on the Y axis. Events go from bottom-up instead of top-down like in all physical day-planners. I formed this mental model when I was very young, which may explain why I can't stand any calendaring apps today. Does anyone else do this? I've seriously considered contacting a calendar manufacturing company to print "Cartesian Calendars" in this manner... or if any such thing already exists, please let me know!
- carterschonwald 16y ago
  well, you could just add a negative sign in from of the times and just write bottom up with a standard calendar
JeffJenkins 16y ago
Outlook's month view lets the scroll wheel scroll through weeks. I've never understood why everything doesn't do that. If I could get real Outlook on my mac I'd drop Apple Mail in a second. It's so much better of a program (even ignoring the exchange parts)
kulkarnic 16y ago
I'm surprised noone brought this up, but this has been done (several times) before: the one I remember is called DateLens by Bederson et al at UMD (See http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=972652&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=85212779&CFTOKEN=83057884 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=972652&dl=GUIDE&#3...) It's interesting how similar ideas keep coming up every so often.
- dws 16y ago
  Also touched on in the sections on "Fisheye View" by Leung et al., "A Review and Taxonomy of Distortion-Oriented Presentation Techniques" in Card et al., "Readings in Information Visualization", Morgan Kaufman, 1999. A bit of googling also turns up http://eagereyes.org/blog/2008/fisheye-calendar-at-yahoo.html http://eagereyes.org/blog/2008/fisheye-calendar-at-yahoo.htm... and a PDF of Bederson's paper on Fisheye calendars http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/1201/1/CS-TR-4368.pdf http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/1201/1/CS-TR-4368...
codebaobab 16y ago
Dan Ingalls (the original implementor of Smalltalk) built a weather station that showed the weather on a logarithmic graph. Very cool idea. http://weather-dimensions.com/index.html http://weather-dimensions.com/index.html
AceJohnny 16y ago
Thuderbird has a pretty good calendering extension called Lightning. By default it adds a pane to the normal view with upcoming events: "Today", "Tomorrow", and "Soon" for stuff in the following week. I find that tremendously useful, and close to Marco's idea.
jhund 16y ago
I did a quick mockup of a interface that would work for me. You can see both future and past. However you could slide today over to the left and reveal two more future columns if that interests you more. By scrolling/swiping you could change the day with focus. Also by tapping on any visible date, you could give focus to that day. Also a "Today" button to go to the present. http://downloads.clearcove.ca/NonLinearTime.png http://downloads.clearcove.ca/NonLinearTime.png

200 points by epe 16y ago

d0m 16y ago

I simply love this idea. I wanted to create a calendar app and I'll clearly remember your idea if I have the time to do my project.

ambition 16y ago

So obvious, but only in retrospect. This is insight at its best.

nandemo 16y ago
It is so "obvious" that it would be very easy to "steal" the idea and not give credit to Marco. After all, you could always say you had the idea independently.
- tsally 16y ago
  Unless you are doing cutting edge research, it's impossible to verify an idea you've invented independently is truly original or not. Even then, there's no guarantee (see: Newton and Leibniz). So I'm not really sure what point you are trying to make.
  - nandemo 16y ago
    Oh, I was merely emphasizing ambition's point in a roundabout, non-serious way (I'm not suggesting that people don't give credit to Marco). I don't agree that it's impossible to know if an idea is original or not. For instance, on one extreme, if 2 composers published a very similar concerto at about the same time, it would be assumed one of them plagiarized the other. On the other extreme, if you're working on an arithmetic problem and there's only one answer, then of course no one would be accused of plagiarism.

lotharbot 16y ago

Seems like an idea worthy of some testing and tweaking. I could go for a 3-column (or row, depending on display type) calendar, where the first column shows today in detail, the second column shows the next week in lesser detail, and the final column shows the next month in even less detail. Perhaps clicking on a given day would bring that day into the first column and adjust the rest of the calendar accordingly. A big fat "today" button and arrows to skip by day/week/month would be fantastic. (As the OP says, a better artist would mock this up. I am not a better artist. Sorry.)

megamark16 16y ago

I recently found and implemented a nice jQuery calendar plugin called FullCalendar in a client site I'm working on. It was terribly easy to integrate into the site thanks to Django. I think I'm going to tinker with it now to see if I can get it to use this type of display as a view option, since it already offers different view options.

tzury 16y ago
don't forget to publish your results ;-)

spuz 16y ago

Google Calendar has an Agenda view which simply shows your upcoming events as an ordered list. I use this as my default view and use the monthly view when scheduling new events.

jasonfried 16y ago

The Backpack Calendar has a default 6 week view with the current week at the top. The only way to see previous weeks is to expressly go back in time. Otherwise, you're always looking at this week + 5 more weeks ahead. http://backpackit.com/calendar http://backpackit.com/calendar

nkh 16y ago
That covers the first point of the article. Anything available for the second and third points? I don’t care about present-and-future items with equal granularity. I wouldn’t mind seeing today in an hour-by-hour view, but I don’t need the same granularity when showing events three days from now. If I switch to a more granular view for today, I lose the ability to see any of what’s happening next week.
tsally 16y ago
Offtopic: Any plans to allow custom repeating schemes like MWF, TR, or whatever? Basically the only reason I canceled my Backpack account and I'd really like to subscribe again.
necubi 16y ago
Google Calendar, too, has a very useful three week view which does the same thing.
- vdm 16y ago
  Not enough for me. I would really appreciate being able to adjust the number of weeks (3-6) to show. The view should show 1 week past and the rest future, regardless of the current time of month, and have continuous rather than chunked scrolling.

3ds 16y ago

maybe like this mockup i just made? http://create.ly/g7qpwcay1 http://create.ly/g7qpwcay1

wallflower 16y ago
Reminds me of Martin Wattenberg's SmartMoney Map of the Market http://www.bewitched.com/marketmap.html http://www.bewitched.com/marketmap.html
growt 16y ago
looks a bit like oursignal.com, or like a treemap in general
Raphael 16y ago
Why are weekends half-size?
- seabee 16y ago
  to reflect work-weeks?
  - greendestiny 16y ago
    To reflect how quickly they seem to pass.
lotharbot 16y ago
I like it. Here are some suggestions for anyone expanding this idea: - make each of the main boxes a little bit narrower so you can have a full week (1+6) in the top section, and a full second week (including full-sized weekend days) across the bottom - make the "flow" obvious somehow. A thicker line separating the top boxes from the bottom would help. Slightly darker or lighter background colors as you get farther from "today" would help as well. - squeeze in navigation controls: a big "today" button, and forward/backward day and week arrows (in the day and week areas). - the very bottom right box could be replaced with "upcoming", and list off anything marked as a priority in the next few weeks after the end of this display.

inrev 16y ago

The Agenda view in Emacs's org-mode has similar ideas. In the week view you see great detail for the current day and a short overview of the days to come. Here is a screen-shot I found online: http://tiny.cc/3gwoj http://tiny.cc/3gwoj

reduxredacted 16y ago

Fantastic idea, though I noted that the author said "I work the same schedule every weekday and I rarely meet with people.", which is something I can't relate to. I meet with a lot of people, regularly. From my perspective: - Last week is important on Monday ... but only on Monday. I do a quick review/plan for the following week and I use data from the previous week for accountability purposes -- as in: Did I deliver on action items from the previous week? I like to get that out of the way on Monday morning so as not to have it hanging over my head the rest of the week. - Some appointments and meetings are more important or come with greater consequences if missed. The day view is dead on, but I'd expand it to be a pad of "Day View" (a.k.a. What's Important hour by hour) at the top with starred items beneath. For instance, my Dentist charges $75 if an appointment is canceled with less than three days notice (this is never enforced, but his time is important, too). My current method is to set a reminder four days before. Once I receive the reminder, I validate that I can make the appointment and reset it to remind me 1 day before hand so that I can cancel anything else that is short-notice that conflicts, then I reset the reminder to 20 minutes prior so that I get off my duff and drive to the Dentist office. I have a similar kludge for important meetings or ones that require a great deal of prep work. Since I check my calendar constantly, I could avoid all of this nonsense if it was just sitting under a thick line beneath my "Day View" as a constant reminder.

MikeTLive 16y ago

this idea was posted a few months ago and I can not find it. anyone have references to it?

stuartjmoore 16y ago
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030989 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1030989
- stuartjmoore 16y ago
  Just so I don't look like a dick: I don't think he stole my idea. We actually emailed back and forth a while ago (started about something else, calendars came up). People have the same ideas at the same time. It's always nice to get another perspective.
jackowayed 16y ago
http://imsoocd.com/2010/01/04/calendars/ http://imsoocd.com/2010/01/04/calendars/

kentosi 16y ago

I can't access google calendar at the moment (at work), but when I use it i have it in a view that only shows the next 7 days. This ticks one of the boxes this guy's talking about. As for having an expanded view of today, and a reducing detail view of the following days ... that's a great idea i think.

vtail 16y ago
You know you can go to https://www.google.com/calendar/render https://www.google.com/calendar/render? Google Calendar is also blocked where I work, but using https does the trick.
- kentosi 16y ago
  i would give you 10 mod points if i could. thankyou so much for letting me plan my life again.

jazzychad 16y ago

Maybe I'm the only one, but I have a mental picture of my calendar using the upper-right quadrant of a Cartesian Plane. Days are on the X axis, Hours are on the Y axis. Events go from bottom-up instead of top-down like in all physical day-planners. I formed this mental model when I was very young, which may explain why I can't stand any calendaring apps today. Does anyone else do this? I've seriously considered contacting a calendar manufacturing company to print "Cartesian Calendars" in this manner... or if any such thing already exists, please let me know!

carterschonwald 16y ago
well, you could just add a negative sign in from of the times and just write bottom up with a standard calendar

JeffJenkins 16y ago

Outlook's month view lets the scroll wheel scroll through weeks. I've never understood why everything doesn't do that. If I could get real Outlook on my mac I'd drop Apple Mail in a second. It's so much better of a program (even ignoring the exchange parts)

kulkarnic 16y ago

I'm surprised noone brought this up, but this has been done (several times) before: the one I remember is called DateLens by Bederson et al at UMD (See http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=972652&dl=GUIDE&coll=GUIDE&CFID=85212779&CFTOKEN=83057884 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=972652&dl=GUIDE&#3...) It's interesting how similar ideas keep coming up every so often.

dws 16y ago
Also touched on in the sections on "Fisheye View" by Leung et al., "A Review and Taxonomy of Distortion-Oriented Presentation Techniques" in Card et al., "Readings in Information Visualization", Morgan Kaufman, 1999. A bit of googling also turns up http://eagereyes.org/blog/2008/fisheye-calendar-at-yahoo.html http://eagereyes.org/blog/2008/fisheye-calendar-at-yahoo.htm... and a PDF of Bederson's paper on Fisheye calendars http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/1201/1/CS-TR-4368.pdf http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/1201/1/CS-TR-4368...

codebaobab 16y ago

Dan Ingalls (the original implementor of Smalltalk) built a weather station that showed the weather on a logarithmic graph. Very cool idea. http://weather-dimensions.com/index.html http://weather-dimensions.com/index.html

AceJohnny 16y ago

Thuderbird has a pretty good calendering extension called Lightning. By default it adds a pane to the normal view with upcoming events: "Today", "Tomorrow", and "Soon" for stuff in the following week. I find that tremendously useful, and close to Marco's idea.

jhund 16y ago

I did a quick mockup of a interface that would work for me. You can see both future and past. However you could slide today over to the left and reveal two more future columns if that interests you more. By scrolling/swiping you could change the day with focus. Also by tapping on any visible date, you could give focus to that day. Also a "Today" button to go to the present. http://downloads.clearcove.ca/NonLinearTime.png http://downloads.clearcove.ca/NonLinearTime.png