Wednesday, November 24, 2004
Calendar+ v2.2.0 Reviewed
Posted by Don Tolson in "SOFTWARE" @ 10:00 AM
Functions Added
So, let’s go through each of the new added functions and show you what they do....
Adding Tap and Hold Menus to the Calendar portion of the Today screen allows you to accomplish simple functions with the appointments without having to go into the Calendar application itself.
Figure 4: Calendar+ Tap and Hold Menus.
The options displayed here are limited by the functions which are either included in Pocket Mobile O/S or added into the Calendar Tap & Hold menus by other applications. (An example shown on MohairSofa includes ‘Find on Map...’ from Pocket Streets.) You can also use this to access the Calendar+ Options screens directly (rather than through Start/Settings/Today/Calendar+/Options.
The Appointment Filter allows you to choose how many appointments, hours or days ahead are to be displayed on the Today screen.
Figure 5: Configuring Calendar+ Options for what to display.
Figure 6: Calendar+ options for how far to look ahead.
Appointment Markers are coloured bars shown beside the appointment entries which provide visual cues as to the Tentative, Conflict or Free-time status.
Figure 7: Calendar+ Today screen showing appointments in conflict.
Free, Tentative and Conflict are the only status’ currently configurable, but it is possible to select from a wide range of colours, to suit individual preferences. During my testing, I found that Calendar+ uses the ‘Tentative’ colour to mark ‘Out of Office’ appointments as well. Perhaps an enhancement for the next version would be a configurable colour for ‘Out of Office’, too?
Figure 8: Configuring Appointment Markers in Calendar+.
Calendar+ also provides 14 different text layouts to choose from for appointment entries. Different layouts are selected by using the right and left arrow buttons under the “Format” label on the Options screen.
Figure 9: Calendar+ Layout Options screen.
Figure 10: An alternative layout.
Figure 11: ...And yet another layout.
You can also change the size of the fonts used for display of the appointment information and the date headings. Sliders beside each of the entries under “Text Size” on the Layout screen set the desired size. The example layout display at the top of this screen responds in real time, so you can see what the effect will be. Just for fun, here’s an example using the minimum text for appointments and the maximum text for headings.
Figure 12: This is probably a little too small for the appointment text, but maybe it would be OK on a VGA screen?
