Live data from Hacker News

Logarithmic calendar view

marco.org

41–50 of 51 posts

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#41

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&#3... ) It's interesting how similar ideas keep coming up every so often.

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.htm... and a PDF of Bederson's paper on Fisheye calendars http://www.lib.umd.edu/drum/bitstream/1903/1201/1/CS-TR-4368...

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#42

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.

don't forget to publish your results ;-)

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#43
post #34
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is brilliant. I think I'm going to steal it for my next app, for integration sometime after the MVP is done.

Speaking of which, when do we get to hear about your new project?

The hidden agenda of the upcoming Tokyo HN meetup is to find that out.

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#44
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.

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#45
post #28
post #10

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

I was thinking something like this that maintains a column format. http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png

I was thinking 1/2/5 days log ratios, but yours has the virtue of keeping the usual week/month/year. Let's see, with some arbitrary truncation/rounding:

    Log10 of 2,  5,  10:  0.3, 0.7, 1.0
    Log10 of 7, 30, 360:  0.8, 1.5, 2.5
I'll take it. Thank you.

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#46
post #28
post #10

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

I was thinking something like this that maintains a column format. http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png

I like the column thing, but tomorrow is more important than in 5 days, so maybe something more like this:

http://create.ly/g7ris7m01

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#47
post #28
post #10

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

I was thinking something like this that maintains a column format. http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png

Having seen this, it turns out it's just the old three-panel view as seen in mail progs, but put upside down. But great to see someone has transferred the ideas to calendars now.

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#48
post #28
post #10

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

I was thinking something like this that maintains a column format. http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png

I find it confusing. You read it top to bottom, left to right, a column at a time. Each column is different. Different sizes. Different relationships. It feels jarring, and disconnecting. It feels like their should be a relationship between the element highlighted, and the items on the right.

I'll try to be specific.

The time is highlighted. This seems associated with the next column over, which is also highlighted (at least, compared to the rest of the column).

Next, the top and bottom of columns match up to the next column (or previous column) with the next or previous day/month. Can you scroll through these? What happens to that relationship then?

Where is April 16? 13? Is there an easy way to tell which column they are in without doing math? I can see it's 7 days ahead in the second column, but to find a date, I'm still having to scan both columns quickly to try and find the date. It's in order, but moving from the bottom to the top feels unnatural, and the sizing difference of the rows means I can't just easily/quickly scan.

Which column do I go to to find a date? Let's say I want to find an overview for the week of Aug. 8, the due date of my son. It seems like selecting a single date requires navigation in all columns, or maybe just a few. Once you start moving one column, does it affect all? That destroys relationships between columns, and then it feels like you are playing slots.

If you do keep the association, you suddenly create a problem where moving one column moves all columns. If you don't allow changing the columns (it's simply a view), then you can't use it to enter data and in turn reduces it's value. However, even with just the view, you dedicate 75% of the view to future events, 50% to events more than 7 days ahead.

I do like the progression from left to right. I also like the idea of present information getting a more detailed view while future data get's more concise. I don't think you present it in an efficient manner, but I like were you could be going with this.

TL;DR: Slot Machines don't make good planners. =)

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#49
post #28
post #10

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

I was thinking something like this that maintains a column format. http://i43.tinypic.com/zu2m2d.png

From the third column: why pack in individual days? I can't imagine it being very easy to display multiple appointments there, you'd run out of room.

Do people really care about the exact day number that something is on? How about just displaying items in order under "second half of April"? Then you won't have space wasted if there's aren't any appointments for a few days, but the data is still there. And perhaps show the day number on hover or something.

Re: Logarithmic calendar view

#50
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

Post reply on HN