Newbie Thoughts on Calendar w/Thunderbird

[Tegan]

Be gentle with me, I'm a real newbie at this. I decided to replace Outlook with Thunderbird once I learned about Calendar. I need my task list, so until I knew I could replace it, I stuck with Outlook.

Anyway, a couple of weeks back I tried installing Calendar on Thunderbird. The installation appeared to work, but when I opened up Calendar I couldn't do anything. The toolbar showed, but not the menu bar, there was just a blank bar. When I clicked on new event, nothing came up. When I closed the window, it took Thunderbird with it. I wrongly assumed that something was wrong with the build and waited for a new build, but after I didn't see any for a few days, I decided the problem might be on my end. I uninstalled Calendar and reinstalled it, and it worked perfectly.

Not content to leave it alone, I tried installing Calendar on Firefox. The same problem happened, but only on the first installation. After uninstalling and reinstalling, it worked fine, although it didn't seem to be looking at the same directory (I was thinking I could pull up Calendar from either program, but it seems to be running two instances of it). Anyway, I can't duplicate the problem now, but it looks like there might be a problem installing Calendar for the very first time. I'm running XP Pro, and have the latest releases of Firefox and Thunderbird.

After a couple of days of playing around with Calendar, I like it WAY better than Outlook. However, there are a few minor problems I've noticed. Nothing I can't live with, but stuff that I'd like to see fixed. I couldn't find these on the bug lists, but they might be there. If they are, and somebody can find me an issue number, I'd love to have it so I can follow along.

1) Recurring tasks ... don't. If you click done on a recurring task, it just goes away. No new task is generated.
2) Related to #1, if you change the date on a task, you get a warning today anyway. I couldn't tell if it will still give the warning on the future date, I'll do a little more testing.
3) Minor display irritation: I like seeing the name of an event on the calendar, the current display order makes the time show up instead. The only way to fix it is to remove the time and make the event into an all-day event, as far as I can tell, and that puts an annoying star in the way. Can we have a custom display for what shows up for an event in the calendar? I'd really rather see a name than a time. I generally use the multiweek view.
4) Outlook had the option of generating a task for a certain amount of time after you marked the last one complete. So, for example, I would set up a task that needed to be started again three days after it was completed the last time. I used this quite a bit, but I don't see a way to set it up in Calendar.

I'm sure I can think of more, but those are the top ones that jumped out at me. The benefits of this program far outweigh the small problems I've had with it. And whoever invented SunTray, THANK YOU! I'm likely to use that program a whole lot.

In short, this is an excellent program that already does a fine job of replacing Outlook for me.

Thanks,

Laura

[jwh400]

Hi Laura, the calendar extension you're using may not see much more developement since the Mozillla Foundation is, I think, concentrating more on Sunbird. I think the plan is to have Sunbird more closely integrated with Thunderbird in the future and all the smart people will I'm sure start creating extensions for Sunbird making customization possible.
I too like an event name rather than a time. I use the task list for timed events. And like you I find that blue star annoying and a waste of space. But I think this project has a great future and already works well considering it's early stage of developement.

[Rod Whiteley]

...it seems to be running two instances of it...

Yes, Calendar runs separately in each base product. By default they use different data. You can point them all at the same data, but you risk conflicts if you ever have more than one instance running at the same time.

1) Recurring tasks ... don't...

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155889
MozCal was originally based on the iCal standard. This is a bug in the standard.

2) ...if you change the date on a task, you get a warning today anyway...

Alarms seem to have various problems. Some careful checking is probably needed to determine whether the problem you describe is covered by an existing bug report. You could submit a new bug and hope that someone else does the checking, or you could help the project a little by doing it yourself.

3) Minor display irritation: I like seeing the name of an event...

There is a vague plan to allow extensions to provide custom views, so in a future version the display should be much more customizable.

4)...generating a task...after...the last one complete...

I don't think I've seen a request for this enhancement Perhaps you should submit it in Bugzilla.

...calendar extension...may not see much more developement...

I don't know what makes you think that. Sunbird and Calendar extensions are developed in parallel.

...Sunbird more closely integrated with Thunderbird...

The Sunbird project aims to provide a stand-alone calendar. It might use APIs to get address book and e-mail functionality from Thunderbird, but there will be no more integration than that.

The integration project, Lightning, is a completely separate project.

[Tegan]

Yes, Calendar runs separately in each base product. By default they use different data. You can point them all at the same data, but you risk conflicts if you ever have more than one instance running at the same time.

If I run Sunbird instead of Calendar, is there any way to open/go to Sunbird from Firefox and Thunderbird, or is this just me not understanding how the programs interact?

See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155889
MozCal was originally based on the iCal standard. This is a bug in the standard.

Thank you for the link! I'll follow that one.

Alarms seem to have various problems. Some careful checking is probably needed to determine whether the problem you describe is covered by an existing bug report. You could submit a new bug and hope that someone else does the checking, or you could help the project a little by doing it yourself.

I'll go back and start testing it. I'll search bugzilla a little more closely for alarm problems and see if it's been reported yet. It's extremely annoying, as it kept popping up alarms at me for tasks I'd deleted, even. I want to see if I can reproduce it.

There is a vague plan to allow extensions to provide custom views, so in a future version the display should be much more customizable.

This is actually the one thing that bothers me most, having the time show up first in the multiweek view. It almost was enough to stop me from switching over, until I figured out that I could make everything an all-day event and see enough of the name to identify each event. If there's a bugzilla report for this one, it's one I really want to follow along.

...generating a task...after...the last one complete...

I don't think I've seen a request for this enhancement Perhaps you should submit it in Bugzilla.

I'll search for it before submitting, but I'm surprised it hasn't been brought up before. It's very useful.

Thanks,

Laura

[faun]

If I run Sunbird instead of Calendar, is there any way to open/go to Sunbird from Firefox and Thunderbird, or is this just me not understanding how the programs interact?

At least you can let them use the same profile: http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=195149
There is a external program launcher-extension, too.

[Tegan]

Just hunting around in Bugzilla, I found two different alarm bugs that might be the one I reported. I'm trying to duplicate mine and see if it's the same thing. Calendar is not cooperating... now that I want it to bug up, it's acting perfectly.

Do I need to be a developer to add comments to bugzilla? I don't want to interrupt the real work going on there, so I'm not sure if my additions will be useful or welcome once I come up with them...

After reading
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155889
I think the last comment on the report, "I propose the following workaround. A recurring task should be treated as a standard one except that when it is completed, its recurrency is examinated: if more instances have to take place, a new (recurring) task is automatically created. This means, more or less, that a recurring task will have a "clone" for each recurrence." is the solution I, as I user, would expect. I would want to be able to look back through the completed tasks and write notes for each instance that wouldn't be copied forward. Is there a way for me to indicate this in Bugzilla, or should I keep my yap shut?

Another bug I found to be of great interest is
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209687
"Unable to transfer events from one imported calendar (or any calendar) to another"
Oh yeah, that would be a real useful fix! While setting up I kept putting events into the wrong calendar. Since I couldn't switch them, I had to recreate each event. Very annoying.

I didn't find any reported bug for my display issue. This one came closest:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271162
But that's not the fix I'd want. I want to be able to remove the time completely and just look at the event title. That would be just for the multiweek and monthly views only. I think I'd also like some way to distinguish all-day events from events starting at a particular time, but I'm probably encouraging some poor developer to pull hair out at the moment, so I'll stop now.

I also didn't see anything about generating a task after the last one is completed. I suppose if I want that functionality, I'm going to have to request an enhancement myself. Again, do I need to be a developer to add bug reports? I'm a little hesitant to put an enhancement request in a bug database.

Thanks,

-Laura

[Rod Whiteley]

Do I need to be a developer to add comments to bugzilla?

No. Anyone can comment. Anyone can submit new bug reports.

Another way to look at it is that participating through Bugzilla makes you into a developer, contributing to the project by testing and designing even if not by coding.

Bugzilla is used to discuss and track all work that may need to be done, including enhancements and wider issues. It is not only for "bugs" in the sense of errors.

[intanet]

3) Minor display irritation: I like seeing the name of an event on the calendar, the current display order makes the time show up instead. The only way to fix it is to remove the time and make the event into an all-day event, as far as I can tell, and that puts an annoying star in the way. Can we have a custom display for what shows up for an event in the calendar? I'd really rather see a name than a time. I generally use the multiweek view.

Thanks,

Laura

THANK YOU LAURA! I have spent hours searching for the solution to this. Even went into the config editor but there was no entry for this matter. Your tip solved the problem for me since, it was a major irritation to me, not seeing the event title but the time.
Much appreciated!
Annette