Category: KDE

Note: Kalendar is still under heavy development. You’re free to poke around and try it out, but it is not yet final software! If you want to contribute to its development, join us in Kalendar’s Matrix room.

This week, we have made some more UI tweaks to Kalendar, making it easier and faster to use than ever. We have also turned lots of stones and crushed lots of bugs.

Let’s get to it!

Added a window menu to Kalendar and improved existing global menu

!36: Add new in-window menu bar, improvements to global menu bar (Claudio Cambra)

Since almost the beginning, Kalendar has depended on hamburger menus to access a lot of its key functionality: undoing/redoing, switching views, accessing settings, and so on. Last week, when we introduced the new sidebar, we managed to remove most of these items from the hamburger menu and place them where you could easily and quickly find them.

We don’t like hamburger menus because they hamper UI discoverability and they slow interaction down. So this week we got rid of them on the desktop. But don’t worry, we’ve replaced them! Kalendar now has the tried and tested menu bar, faster and clearer than the hamburger.

Carl Schwan did the lion’s share of implementing a global menu for Kalendar last week, but now we also have an in-window menu for those of you that don’t use the global menu. The global menu has been improved this week, and both the in-window and global menu have a full set of menu items that should let you quickly and more efficiently use Kalendar.

Further improvements to mobile use

!32: Rearrangements to incidence info drawer and general drawer fixes on mobile (Claudio Cambra)
!38: Make schedule view swipeable on mobile (Claudio Cambra)

Last week we introduced a new swipeable version of the month view, which made it more pleasant to use on mobile. This week, we are also adding this change to the schedule view. Much like with the month view, you can now swipe your way through the months in the schedule view!

We have also turned the incidence information drawer into a bottom drawer, rather than a side drawer. This should make the action buttons far easier to reach on a phone screen, while still providing enough space to see all of an event’s or todo’s information at once.

We are also working on a navigation-focused bottom-toolbar for mobile use, which should let you more quickly swap between Kalendar’s different views.

Tidying up the sidebar

!34: Use collapsible tree views (Carl Schwan)
!39: Sort collection correctly in sidebar (Carl Schwan)

Your calendar sources in the sidebar are now collapsible, letting you hide an account’s calendars. This should make it easier to parse through your calendar list and also make it clearer as to which calendar belongs to which account. Local calendars are also now placed at the top, so they are not to be confused with remote calendars.

No todos? Here’s why

The todo view now provides some helpful messages to indicate why there are no todos to show. It can either be due to the fact there are, in fact, no todos left to complete, or because the calendar is not enable. In both of these situations, a helpful message and action is provided for you to address this.

Bug-fixes

!32: Rearrangements to incidence info drawer and general drawer fixes on mobile (Claudio Cambra)

• No more phantom todos on calendar change or searching
• Incidence info drawer now stays open after selecting a completed todo from the completed todos sheet
• Scrolling through completed todos with a mouse now doesn’t have inertia, as expected
• Global drawer now closes after making a selection when modal
• Map busy indicator in incidence info drawer no longer shows up when the location is a link

!35: Adapt window title to current view (Felipe Kinoshita)

• Window title now shows the current views’ name

!38: Make schedule view swipeable on mobile (Claudio Cambra)

• Date synchronisation between views now fixed

Commit 69aff0ce: Fixed date misalignment issues in month grid (Claudio Cambra)

• Date misalignment in month view grid now fixed

Commit 4816c94a: Fixed today button in month view (Claudio Cambra)

• Today button now fixed in month view

!37: Don’t complain about invalid dates if the event is all-day long (Boris Petrov)

• Fix inline error for all-day events

Coming up next

Everyone is asking about tag support in the todo view. We are working on it! Promise!!

Is there anything you’d like to see added to Kalendar? Get in touch! I’m @clau-cambra:kde.org on Matrix.

Note: Kalendar is still under heavy development. You’re free to poke around and try it out, but it is not yet final software! If you want to contribute to its development, join us in Kalendar’s Matrix room.

This week, we have added a host of improvements to Kalendar that should make using it on a touchscreen a significantly nicer experience. To demonstrate, we are going to show Kalendar running on the Pinephone!

We also have a number of usability improvements on the desktop, additions to the todo view, and some performance improvements. Here we go!

Improving usability of touchscreens

!27: Mobile touch fixes and improvements (Claudio Cambra)
!29: Turn month view into a PathView (Claudio Cambra)

After briefly trying out Kalendar on the Pinephone over the course of the week, we found the experience finicky. This week, then, we have a couple of fixes. I’ll let this video do most of the talking:

A significant improvement to the interaction areas for incidences should improve navigation on a touch screen.

A bigger change is the implementation of the Month View as a PathView. Put simply, this lets us put several month grids on a path that you can swipe through. This has two effects: you can swipe through months on a touchscreen in a pretty intuitive manner, and on the desktop you also get nice animations!

Improving our use of space on the desktop

!25: Add simple global menu (Carl Schwan)
!31: Add sidebar to Kalendar (Felipe Kinoshita)

If you use Plasma’s global menu, you’ll be pleased to hear that we have added support for it this week! You will now be able to use a slickly-integrated menu for all your needs while using Kalendar. This menu has all the typical actions you will frequently use: adding new events/todos, undo/redo, etc.

We have also included a new left sidebar that will make navigation and interaction significantly easier, especially on the desktop. This sidebar gives you actions to quickly access each of Kalendar’s views and to filter your calendars, making use of the ample space on your desktop screen to make things more accessible. Its behaviour also changes depending on the view you are currently in: in the month and schedule views, it presents you with all your calendars and lets you enable/disable them; in the todo view, you are simply presented with your todo calendars which you can not only enable/disable, but also click on to access only the todos in said calendar.

Making todos faster and more powerful

!21: Add a specialised todo view to Kalendar (Claudio Cambra)
!24: Add more and better ways to add todos (and subtodos) (Claudio Cambra)

Last week we added a new todo view that let you easily and quickly access your todos. This week we have added some new features that will make this view even more useful.

For one, you can now add sub-todos in a variety of different ways. First, you can do this through the incidence information drawer, which shows a convenient ‘Add sub-todo’ button now when viewing a todo. Additionally, you can also right-click (or hold tap) on a todo and then select ‘Add sub-todo’ from the popup menu.

There is also now a quick-add todo text field. This lets you just write in the name of your new todo and add it instantly to the todo calendar of your choice, saving you time and effort! When viewing all your todos, you will be prompted for the todo calendar you’d like to add your todo to; when you’re already looking at a particular todo calendar, it will just get added to this one.

Lastly, we have also introduced a new search bar that lets you quickly search through all of your todos to find the right one.

Bug-fixes and performance improvements

!21: Add a specialised todo view to Kalendar (Claudio Cambra)

• Incidence info drawer button now longer overlaps with actions in toolbar (Claudio Cambra)

!Simplify and moderately accelerate IncidenceOccurrenceModel’s updateFromSource()

• Kalendar is now slightly faster at loading incidences

Coming up next

Now that the month view is swipeable, we want to give the schedule view the same treatment and make it a much nicer experience on mobile. We have also received numerous requests for tag support in the todo view, and we will be working on that too. There are more things in wait too 😉

Is there anything you’d like to see added to Kalendar? Get in touch! I’m @clau-cambra:kde.org on Matrix.

Note: Kalendar is still under heavy development. You’re free to poke around and try it out, but it is not yet final software!

This week, we have something new to show you: Kalendar is getting ready to become your new todo app!

The work you will see is not yet finished — there are a lot of visual tweaks that will happen soon and it is still missing some important capabilities. However, we are happy to show you what will become the base for the productivity-focused section of KDE’s new calendar application.

Also new this week are several bug fixes that address important issues, making Kalendar more stable and usable.

The new todo view

!21: Add a specialised todo view to Kalendar

While Kalendar has previously allowed you to view todos, this came with some caveats: they had to have a set date, you couldn’t complete them with one click, and you couldn’t see which todos were subtodos of other todos.

The new todo view is designed to make viewing all of your todos simple and fast. Upon opening the view you will be able to see all of your uncompleted todos with some of their relevant details, including their due dates (if set) and their priority levels (if set). Overdue todos will have their dates marked in red. The circular checkboxes next to each task match the colour of the todo’s parent calendar.

The todo view is centered around a Kirigami TreeListView, which lets you expand and contract todos to view or hide subtodos. You can interact with these subtodos in the same way you can with top-level todos. Clicking on any todo will open the information drawer, universal throughout Kalendar, letting you interact with a todo just like you would interact with an event in the month view.

The todo view also has a sidebar. This sidebar shows a list of all your todo calendars, both local and from your online accounts. You can select or deselect the calendars you’d like included in your ‘All todos’ view by clicking on the calendar’s checkbox. Clicking on the calendar item itself presents you with a filtered view of your todos, displaying only the todos contained in that specific calendar.

Your todo views can also be sorted according to your todo’s due dates, priorities, or names. A button next to the calendar title lets you change whether this should be in ascending or descending order.

While your incomplete todos are visible in the main view, your completed todos are saved in a drawer. Clicking on the ‘Show complete’ button opens this drawer with all your completed todos. This drawer’s todos are sorted and filtered in exactly the same way as the main todo view.

We hope you like our new todo view and that you will find it useful!

Bug-fixes

This week, we have fixed a pair of pretty annoying bugs:

Commit 35b992c5: Fixed all day event or todo handling in incidence editor when editing

• Editing all-day events in the incidence editor now works as it should, with the ehckbox correctly reflecting the incidence’s state

!19: Unify date and time combos and fix their editing issues

• Refactored code for date and time editable combo boxes in incidence editor, eliminating bugs and making behaviour more in line with user expectations

Coming up next

Our todo view needs some tweaking and especially needs to incorporate the ability to add sub-todos. We are also exploring the ability to view todos as a kanban board, which should make Kalendar even more suitable for productivity purposes! Besides this, we want to get started with making Kalendar more friendly for first-time users, with some onboarding and handling of the creation of basic a basic local calendar. Expect some more visual tweaks over the coming days too!

Is there anything you’d like to see added to Kalendar? Get in touch! I’m @clau-cambra:kde.org on Matrix.