BusyCal Screencast: Event Info Panel

This is the sixth in a series of screencasts highlighting the unique features in BusyCal. This screencast demonstrates some of the features of the Event Info Panel, including:

• Non-modal floating window
• Smart data entry
• Customizable attributes
• Tags
• Embedded info pane
• Keyboard navigation
• Local alarms on read-only events

The BusyCal public beta will be available later this month. If you'd like to be notified when it is available, you can sign up here:

http://www.busymac.com/beta

Comments

[Scott Rose]

This is so awesome. Everything that iCal should've been but never was.

[lucky lindy]

I agree..with every screencast it's looking better and better. Soon as possible, please show us how BusyCal will handle alarms and snoozing of alarms (a major iCal sore spot for many of usl.) Keep up the great work...as someone whispers at the end of this screencast...NICE! :-)

[John]

Lucky Lindy -- what do you like/dislike about iCal's Alarms and what would you like BusyCal to do differently?

[Lucky Lindy]

To be fair, it's more the pop-ups than the alarms. Alarms functions well enough for me; but the pop-up when the alarm goes off drives me nuts. Here are my two main issues:

1) The pop-up's snooze function has hard-coded and impractical delay intervals. For example, if I set an alarm to pay a bill at 10am, and the alarm goes off but I am busy until I get home at 7pm, the hard-coded optionsin the pop-up are 1, 5, 15 and 30 minutes, 1 and 2 hours, 1 day, and 1 week. That means I have to keep snoozing the pop-up every 2 hours until 5pm to get my 7pm reminder. Then if I, again, need to delay for 40 minutes...well, you get the idea. I would like to be able to set the snooze for a specific time and/or number of minutes, hours, days, months or even years -- without having to go into the calendar and edit the actual event alarm entry.

2) Assuming the above is implemented, there should be a preference setting available that allows me to configure my desired snooze display options and defaults (basically letting ME decide the hard-coding on the pop-up's options.

On my old Treo, I used a program called Datebk by Pimlico software. For me, that software's snooze implementation is the model. Here is a link to the page from the manual that shows how they implemented it:
http://www.effteecorp.com/datebk5-snoozefunction.pdf

[James]

Sweet!

Are the available attributes (shown on the back of the info panel) user definable?

[John]

James -- No, the available attributes correspond to the types of metadata contained in the calendar events. It's the standard stuff you'd find in iCal, plus some unique things we've added like tags.

[Bob]

This is absolutely amazing; I cannot wait for the release!!!!! Thanks for not only bringing back the floating info panel but also adding the inline note editor.

Panther's iCal floating info panel was a great idea, but I found it unusable because it was only visible when iCal was the active application. Will BusyCal's floating info panel be visible even if BusyCal is not the active app.?

I think this would be a great feature because it would allow you to use your event/todo notes as a reference while you work in other apps (e.g. mail, safari, etc). Kind of like a supercharged sticky note.

[John]

Bob -- Yes, the BusyCal info panel remains visible when you switch apps. You'll be able to get your hands on it next week when we release the public beta. :)