improve entering date and time of an event

[Anonymous]

Usability of creating events is poor. This has been bothering me for quite some time and when I don’t tell anyone, it will never change 😉 I try to be constructive and make suggestion to improve. I know all of this you inherited from the old version.

* Date and Time are in separate boxes, though they belong together.
* dates cannot be entered with keyboard 🙁 (but times cannot be entered with mouse) – I personally don’t like touching the mouse while entering data. Tab-key is my friend 🙂
* recurrence date box looks like event date-box.
* if I set a begin date, end date is not automatically changed to the same date (or the same date difference)
* it’s never checked, if end is before start (as a result outlook complains about the ical-file containing invalid data)

I’d like to have it look like that, [C] is the calenderpicker-Icon:

Start: [ 05.10.2015][C] [ 20:30]
End: [ 06.10.2015][C] [ 03:00]

I’d like to have it behave like that:
– if I change startdate eg. to 08.10., end date automagically changes to 09.10.
– If I set an endtime in the morning and before start, autmatically add a day to enddate
– if I change start time, end time changes to keep the duration
(I once had a software where you could enter dates like this: “.” would complete to todays date when hitting tabkey, “15.” would give 15th of this month and this year, “15.09.” would be Sept. 15th of this year … dunno if you like it. I thought it was a clever and fast way to enter dates)

Maybe you could put the recurrence & recurrence start/end-date into one single box. (Otherwise my users sometimes confuse start- and end dates of the event with those of the recurrence and I get events three months long in my calender) maybe it could look somehow like this:

[X] recurring event
starting on [ 05.10.2015]
Frequency [weekly ]
every [ 1] week
[]Mo [X]Tu []We []Th []Fr []Sa []Su
ending on [ 18.12.2015]

Preview: 05.10.2015 [Can][Mov], 12.10.2015 [Can][Mov], 19.10.2015 [Can][Mov], …, 18.12.2015 [Can][Mov],

Suggestions Welcome. Thanks a lot!

[Franky]

Time can be entered with the mouse (use the scroll-button on your mouse), or even the arrow keys. Entering dates manually leaves too much room for error, so no go.
If the end date is before the start date, it gets set to the start date.
Some people don’t care or never enter a time for an event either, so it can be hidden if wanted.
It is clearly marked which are the date boxes for the recurrence, and which for the event duration then.
Things need to stay simple for me too …

[Anonymous]

Hello and Thanks for your answer.

First: I thought I entered this in feature request … so feel free to move it there.

I use EME in German so please excuse if I don’t use the exact English names of functions/boxes/fields … etc

* When I enter events, I have my hands on the keyboard and I don’t want to grab the mouse. Setting the date with up/down-Arrow keys (as is already done with times!!!) would be great.
* autosetting end date DOES NOT work, I tested it on Linux & Windows with recent Firefox & Chrome (I checked again: it is silently changed on SAVING the event, not in the UI, AND it’s switching begin and end date when saving AS a recurring event!)
* hundreds of pages and webapps manage manual entering and checking of dates, so I see no real problem there. something like jQueryUI might help.
* the necessity for hiding the time box only arises because it’s an extra box in the first place, IMHO. Standard and expected application behaviour would be to grey out the time fields when checking “event lasts all day” (in my book ALL events have a start and end TIME, except birthdays and holidays, but they aren’t exactly events, birthday PARTIES are – but that’s only my opinion again)
* every setting for a recurring event is in the “recurring event” box, except the beginning and ending of that recurrence – doesn’t that sound illogical and inconsistent to you, too?

if you don’t find the time, I’ll change it myself and send you a patch. You might test it for yourself and merge it, if you like it.

Regards

[Franky]

Hi,

I admit that the recurrence info is indeed split in two, and that can be improved. Any patch is greatly appreciated!
The suggestion for greying out the time when clicking “all day” is a good suggestion too, so maybe I’ll indeed merge date/time into 1 box then (or again: a patch is appreciated, any JS should go in eme_admin_events.js)
And indeed: autosetting the event end date is not happening (that’s not what I said), but could be added (I admit that I thought about it in the past but just didn’t do it).
Concerning the entering of date via keyboard: I need to take many localization into account, so it is not going to be as easy as you think … but for reference, I use http://keith-wood.name/datepick.html
Edit: for entering a date via the keyboard: http://keith-wood.name/datepickRef.html (tab “commands”) shows you the keyboard reference that works already.
Edit 2: maybe the datepicker option “constrainInput” is sufficient (didn’t see that one before and didn’t try it yet) and then the field can be made read/write again

[Franky]

Btw, what do you mean with “it’s switching begin and end date when saving AS a recurring event” ? This sounds like a bug …

[Anonymous]

I stumbled upon this, when I tested how/if start/enddate autosetting worked and I’ll have to look deeper into it tonight and if indeed it is a bug I’ll make a bug report with instructions to reproduce it.

[Franky]

This is now improved in the latest release, hope it helps 🙂

[Author]

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