Thursday, October 6, 2011

Week Start Day - vs - Swipe Action


As it turns out I might need to explain these options in a bit more detail.  While I've only had one complaint about this option, it made me question the validity and whether or not it was helpful.  Admittedly I think in a different manner then a lot of people.  I look for fluidity and ease of use towards a problem, but I neglect to provide the proper information after I've solved an issue.  So I will do my best here.

Week start day is as far as I can see very easy to understand.  If I want my weeks to start on Monday, then I should be able to do this.  With such an easy modification I never understood why it was never implemented in the first place.  Was I to assume that since I live in the USA that I would have to start my week on Sunday.  This never made sense to me, since I always thought that the "weekend" was supposed to to be at the end of the week.

Now comes my dreaded Swipe action.  Oh, a power foe it was to the Week start day...  Here is where fluidity and ease of use came into play.  I am not a today person, but more of a everyday person.  When I look at a schedule I want to know what is happening around that time as well.  When I am using my Calendar app I want to be able to jump to a specific week without having to select a specific day and then go to the menu to adjust to week view.  This is where the swipe action on the Month View came into play.  A single swipe action to the right on the Month View of Calendar Plus will take you to the now MultiDay View.  What improved this even further was that I adjusted the swipe action to select the week that was swiped over.  For example if I was in the Month View and I wanted to see what was happening next week, I would simply swipe that week.  I was brilliant and so simple to use.

It didn't end there though.  I believed I could go one step further. "What if" I had events happening from say Thursday through the weekend and into next week and I wanted to see that schedule.  Since my week starts on Monday I would have to go back and forth between two screens to see all of the events.  Now "What if", I could dynamically adjust the week start day with a simple placement of the finger when I swipe the calendar.  So now, when you swipe the Month View if I start the swipe from Thursday, The MultiDay View displays a week starting on Thursday.  This allows easy viewing of any events anywhere in the week.

Now while this seemed so ingenious to me, it may have caused issues with other Calendar Plus users.  So, I have added an option in the settings that allow you to enable weeks to maintain start day even during a swipe or week selection from the menu.

I hope this helps a few people out and makes the calendar even easier to use.

Until next time.....

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