A new day for Google Calendar

http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/11/a-new-day-for-google-calendar.html

by aren55555 • 12 years ago

357 123 12 years ago

gmailblog.blogspot.com

mholt• 12 years ago

Finally. I feel like the current Calendar app has been stuck in 2009. It looks like this new one is actually designed for use on small screens.

ssully• 12 years ago

Agreed! Its been even more noticeable lately with Google rolling out material design updates for their apps the last few months.

pcurve• 12 years ago

Agreed. Also I hope they improved recurring tasks and reminder, because the current one is bad.

twistedpair2• 12 years ago

Calendars on mobile phones are a hard design problem. We're used to large calendars the size of well... a wall calendar. Try making that 3" wide and you can't show all the days and information and you either (1) make things too small (GS4 Cal app) or (2) make it a swipe fest. This is probably the reason they didn't address the design previously.

r00fus• 12 years ago

It's not like it's not a widely addressed problem - look at FantastiCal and other calendar apps - lots of very cool design ideas to deal with the limited space.

fudged71• 12 years ago

The desktop calendar is far behind. I'm moving to Sunrise desktop calendar until they put out a big update (someday).

amaks• 12 years ago

Unfortunately web version has not been updated.

johngd• 12 years ago

I second this. I cannot wait for the day where I don't second guess myself whether I want to put an event in my company's MSExchange calendar, or google calendar because I don't know if I will see it if saved to the latter.

enobrev• 12 years ago

Not sure if this applies, but I got the web version of Inbox about 2 days after I installed the Inbox app on my phone. Ideally they'll release the web version soon after as well.

kolev• 12 years ago

The web-based version is way too outdated. Given Inbox was written using the newest GWT, and I assume Calendar is using an older version, maybe it won't be such a big deal to refresh that, too.

msoad• 12 years ago

I loved the "meaningful animation"[1] for location pin after you create an event. At first I thought Material Design is a lot of buzz words with not much innovation but when I read the docs I realized they put a lot of thoughts behind it.

[1] http://www.google.com/design/spec/animation/meaningful-trans...

emehrkay• 12 years ago

I like it too. Reminds me of of the pin drop on apple/google maps when you find a location (or just about any other action done on an OS X machine).

Sidenote: you people on the "tech internet" use the word innovation too much

jobu• 12 years ago

Their assists animation looks interesting, but I will wait to judge until I can actually try it. The Apple calendar looks great, but feels really clunky to add and edit events. (Especially on a Mac!)

For pure usability, I haven't found a calendar program that beats MS Outlook running on Windows.

eridius4• 12 years ago

Can you elaborate on what you mean by "clunky"? I haven't noticed any issues adding or editing events, in either OS X or iOS's Calendar apps.

Also note that Yosemite added event suggestions when adding new events to the OS X Calendar app (but I don't believe iOS added anything like that for the iOS app). I haven't had a chance to experiment with it yet (since I primarily do event entry in iOS), but it looks pretty straightforward.

andreyf2• 12 years ago

Consistent choreography. Do: Direct user attention with coordinated, orderly motion. Don't: Don’t confuse users with inconsistent or disorderly motion and objects leaving/entering in seemingly random directions.

This seems like a strange hard rule to follow. The disorganized demo has a very different "feel" to it that might be appropriate in some places more than others.

matchu• 12 years ago

From my viewing, the "feel" is chaos. Why are they all moving different directions? Does it mean anything?

Watching the Don't video legitimately hurt my brain; the only way an app can justify that kind of choreography is if disorientation is an intended part of the emotional experience.

jesperhh• 12 years ago

But you still cannot post simple HTML or RTF into the web version..

matmann2001• 12 years ago

So first we have a new Gmail app, and now a new Google Calendar app. What's the roadmap here?

Is Google going to roll out new versions of their other apps? Do they plan to maintain both apps in parallel, and for how long? Is this just an experiment or do they plan to convert all users to the new apps eventually?

knicholes• 12 years ago

I'm betting that this has something to do with deprecating GWT and supporting AngularJS.

StevePerkins• 12 years ago

Putting aside the fact that GWT 3.0 is about to come out... neither Gmail nor Google Calendar even use GWT. Like the overwhelming majority of Google's real-world web apps, they're primarily based on Closure Tools. GWT is only used in a handful of places these days, the most significant being Google Maps (assuming they didn't remove that during the last rewrite).

Despite being famously "backed by Google", I'm not sure about how many real-world Google properties actually use Angular yet. Most actual Google web apps still very much revolve around a technology stack from 5 years ago. Do as I say, not as I do...

Regardless, what does the JavaScript library for their web apps have to do with their native mobile apps?

Touche• 12 years ago

The new Inbox uses GWT.

twistedpair2• 12 years ago

* Google Groups is GWT

* Google Contacts is GWT

* Orkut was/is GWT

yincrash• 12 years ago

The intro video for the calendar app also shows a new Maps icon.

jordanthoms2• 12 years ago

Are you referring to inbox? Or the Gmail app redesign?

All the Android and Web apps are being updated at the moment for Material Design, with the higher priority being on the Android ones it seems to get them ready in time for the imminent 5.0 launch. They're just updating the app for everyone (the new ones are backwards compatible with less flashy animations). Inbox is a separate app though.

PMan74• 12 years ago

Posted by Ian Leader, Product Manager

Nominative determinism in action folks

pbhjpbhj• 12 years ago

> Posted by Ian Leader, Product Manager
Nominative determinism in action folks

Selection|Reporting|Sampling bias in action folks.

;0)

twic• 12 years ago

What? No, Google renames all its senior employees according to their function now.

smacktoward• 12 years ago

I wonder if he's related to Jennifer Government (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_Government)...

organsnyder• 12 years ago

His name precluded him from his first career choice of copy editing.

archagon• 12 years ago

John Calendar must be feeling pretty crappy right about now.

kruk• 12 years ago

Looking forward to iOS app. Already store all contacts and calendar on Google servers, might as well use their app.

mey• 12 years ago

Still no support for Windows app store it looks like.

guardian5x• 12 years ago

Not sure why this is downvoted. I would like to see Google to support Windows Store. Offering the best possible cross-platform support ist definately not evil.

netrus• 12 years ago

It seems I do not really have to hope my vendor will provide an Android update for my phone, as Google distributes most cool new stuff using the app ecosystem. As with Inbox, I think Google is finally generating sufficient pressure on developers and businesses to use meta-data for their mails and websites. I appreciate that. If their text parser for stuff like locations and times works for non-english texts, I'll be a super happy user!

haubey• 12 years ago

The flip-side to this is that the Android versions of these apps aren't getting anymore love. Messages is now Hangouts, Browser is now Chrome, Calender is now GCal. I heard that the Gmail app is going to start allowing Yahoo email accounts too. Android is much more locked down than it once was.

myko• 12 years ago

Except AOSP Email was updated in Lollipop, as was Messenger.

lnanek2• 12 years ago

I'd be happy if they stopped trying to be fancy and just covered usability basics like supporting the browser back button. I can't even count the number of times I've hit back on an event screen expecting to get to my calendar view and left the calendar site entirely. Yes, there's a fancy JavaScript button that works that I could take ten times longer to trigger, but that's not good practice to force users to use your internal JS only navigation solution.

orbitur2• 12 years ago

1. The post is referring to a new Android app, not the web UI.

2. The situation you're talking about has existed since... well, it's been there for the last 3 years I've been using Google Calendar. I, too, would like a working back button, but the web UI is effectively set in stone.

ImJasonH2• 12 years ago

The back button issue in the web UI was fixed recently.

tmhedberg• 12 years ago

Agreed that the back button issue was annoying for a long time. Fortunately, the fix went live last week!

nevir2• 12 years ago

http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/30/google-calendar-now-update...

chuckcode• 12 years ago

Agreed. I'd really like to just be able to look at part of two consecutive months at the same time. Seems silly to have the same visualization constraints as a real calendar that crossing from the 31st of current month to 12th of next month means going back and forth a few times.

Love google calendar for the cloud, sharing and ability to email myself custom reminders but the UI on the web is pretty minimal. I tried a couple different calendar apps and found fantastical by flexbits.com to have the best UI/functionality for me on iPhone.

spicyj• 12 years ago

You can set your custom (fourth) view to "4 Weeks", which does the trick for me.

jayshahtx• 12 years ago

I wrote my senior thesis on a calendar assistant that achieves much of the functionality mentioned here (recommending times/places, auto updates, etc) and lost so much motivation just to the sheer amount of integration between parties/services required to solve this problem. There has been a lot of work in the academic space on optimizing calendar/email functions but its challenging to implement across so many email providers/clients. I'm glad Google is taking a step in this direction, I'm not confident many startups would be able to solve this problem effectively.

k-mcgrady• 12 years ago

> "I'm not confident many startups would be able to solve this problem effectively."

Take a look at Sunrise. They're doing a pretty good job I think.

cbhl• 12 years ago

One thing that helps is if you can convince email senders to put in custom markup with the required metadata:

https://developers.google.com/gmail/markup/highlights

pradn2• 12 years ago

Adding events from emails is nice, but I'd love to be able to add an event from taking a picture of a poster or a flyer. I see ads for concerts, rallies, art exhibits, and so on whenever I'm walking around town or visiting the local library. I'd love to just snap a picture and have the details uploaded to my calendar.

sounds• 12 years ago

A QR code should be sufficient.

pradn2• 12 years ago

But this requires every poster creator to add an ugly QR code. Plus, QR codes just take you to a website and then you have to add info to your calendar manually. Bonus points if they support .ics but that's rare.

ou812• 12 years ago

Still doesn't have a month view with legible event labels?

Not sure why they can't do this, the default Calendar app that ships with Samsung phones pulls it off beautifully.

buzzkills• 12 years ago

I wonder if it works for domain accounts. Most things don't seem to for some time.

porges• 12 years ago

Given that it is now more than 2 years since Gmail cards were released for Google Now, and there's still no sign of them arriving for Apps accounts... I'd say no.

tdicola• 12 years ago

It works for my domain/apps account on a Nexus 9.

Pro_bity• 12 years ago

And another reason to switch to Android.

acalendar2• 12 years ago

When will google's calendar app have CalDav.

It shocks me that the default calendar for android does not interoperate with any calendar server except gmail's (unless you can shoe-horn events in with a separate caldav app.)

Nullabillity• 12 years ago

Their calendar on the web can both import and export iCalendar feeds. I'm not sure about automatically writing back updates though.

acalendar2• 12 years ago

The Gmail Web Calendar has many good features I agree.

But, the Android Calendar would be much better if it would work with other calendar servers besides Gmail. If google called the Android Calendar the Gmail Calendar App, it would be more appropriate. But, this current default android calendar app doesn't use the CalDav protocol and only works with the gmail calendar. This is very peculiar behavior and not what I'd expect from google.

duaneb• 12 years ago

Finally, a calendar app for ios. The current options are terrible across the board.

boiler_up800• 12 years ago

Yes! I am super excited about this. I currently use the mobile website as an app on the home screen and the experience is not great.

bruceboughton• 12 years ago

What a terrible advert. I couldn't focus on the features being demoed because they were on screen so fleetingly and the background scenes were so distracting.

They're trying to imitate Apple's adverts but completely blow it by showing overcomplicated interactions.

eslaught• 12 years ago

I'm a little worried that this is introducing a new vector for spam. I have already been getting spam through invites (where they get auto-added to my calendar even before I have a chance to see what they are).

Frankly, I want my calendar to be a private calendar. I don't want to share it, or receive invites through it, or auto-add events just because I got an email. I'm still happy to have the sync capability, because I use a smartphone, but aside from that I really have no use cases which require my calendar to be online at all.

Admittedly, this may just be a case where Google's interests are not aligned with my own. If so, are there (real, viable) alternatives?

gmcabrita• 12 years ago

I have already been getting spam through invites (where they get auto-added to my calendar even before I have a chance to see what they are).

Fortunately you can turn this off in the Google Calendar settings. This way they only get added to your calendar if you accept.

lern_too_spel• 12 years ago

You could already add events to somebody's calendar by sending them an invite, and you could already mark events as spam. I don't see what's new here.

timcraft• 12 years ago

http://calendaz.com (disclaimer: I made it)

I wanted a private calendar without sharing/invites too, so I ended up building my own (do not recommend unless you have a lot of time on your hands!).

No spam, no ads, you own your data. Feel free to email me if you have any questions about it.

d0m• 12 years ago

I won't lie, I'm starting to become a google fanboy again thanks to the beautiful google material design experience. Hats off to the team behind this new calendar app.

oneeyedpigeon3• 12 years ago

It's interesting how, as Apple's design sensibility gets more and more questionable with the recent changes to iOS and OSX, google appears to be finally paying due respect to good design and really putting the work in. And it's paying off, big time.

fidotron3• 12 years ago

In the sense that it's annoying a lot of Android users, it certainly is paying off.

What the current Android leadership simply don't understand is that there were a lot of Android users that bought Android devices because they didn't like iOS, not because they couldn't afford it. iOS 7 caused a critical mass of my iPhone using network to want to switch to Android, and now with Lollipop the reverse is happening, since if people wanted the iOS experience they might as well get the real thing.

Design fascism works when you're in a niche, but will never be mass market. Windows Phone is similarly lauded in design circles but mysteriously fails to sell, and this is why. The crowds praising all these "improvements" are the sort of people that actually thought Windows Mobile was not only tolerable, but a good idea.

My gut is Google think this is the only way to get iOS users to switch, and they aren't too concerned about existing users, but the side effect of this is that all of the major smartphone OSs have reached the same level of out-of-touch ness that we had prior to the original iPhone coming along.

shakethemonkey2• 12 years ago

How can you say this. Have you even looked at Hangouts?

eridius4• 12 years ago

Apple's design sensibility gets more and more questionable

What do you mean by this? With iOS 7, there was a big outcry, because they changed the aesthetics of the OS pretty significantly, but that was a one-time event (and also highly subjective). But this is the first time I've heard anyone imply that Apple is trending towards having worse design. If anything, with the removal of skeuomorphism, Apple's design is more consistent than ever.

google appears to be finally paying due respect to good design and really putting the work in.

My impression upon watching the video was that it looks very much like a 3rd-party iOS app. I am glad to see Google putting effort into their design. Although I don't agree with all of their choices (for example, I think the "Schedule View" image really is kind of awful, because it adds a lot of visual clutter and inconsistency, making it harder to scan the information quickly).

72deluxe4• 12 years ago

It may be the case for some of the Google apps but the lack of coherent design in many many many of the Play Store apps leaves a lot to be desired, and almost tarnishes the platform a bit.

tspike• 12 years ago

Good grief, they sure are desperate to turn their most useful apps into activity streams. The day I have to scroll past an ad to check an appointment is the day I stop using Calendar.

maho• 12 years ago

My employer (German) just banned all Google products (except search) for work-related things, due to privacy issues. Reading Google's latest terms-and-conditions, this move is somewhat understandable, given the strong privacy laws that German companies and institutions have to follow.

On the other hand, I guess that scanning a large amount of emails is the precise thing that allows them to offer robust email-to-event conversion. But I wish that this sort of thing would work locally (on the cellphone or computer in question), not on a remote server somewhere.

andybak2• 12 years ago

It will be interesting to see if in years to come we'll look at Germany's policy as overly cautious and a net loss or extraordinarily prescient.

I'm genuinely on the fence on this one. I'm rather cavalier on privacy issues (at least where they affect my own person) and quite happy with the goodies I receive in return. However I sometimes wonder how I'll feel with the benefit of hindsight.

bjelkeman-again• 12 years ago

I meet quite a few people talking about moving their tech infrastructure away from US controlled cloud services. I may live in a bubble, but it would be interesting to see some data on intentions in EU companies about this.

alphakappa• 12 years ago

I watched the video twice and I still can't figure out what the changes are about because I kept getting distracted by all the stuff happening in the background.

Even after I purposely tried to focus on the device UI, I couldn't process all of it in any coherent way. Please don't make promo videos that leave me with no sense of the product you are trying to demo.

legohead• 12 years ago

cute video. I have no idea what the new calendar does.

pinaceae• 12 years ago

personnally i can't stand calendar views that do not show empty stretches of time - it is important info to me if i DON'T have anything coming up in the next two hours.

i can see this at a glance in classic calendars. i cannot in this agenda/stream view.

yay, progress.

patbuchanan• 12 years ago

Agreed - that's what I'm checking on the majority of the time myself.

obviouslygreen• 12 years ago

I've been using and (for the most part) promoting Android ever since the G1... but after 2.x the rate of UI change has, in my opinion, been terrible from a usability experience.

Pretty much all software (whether that's apps, websites, programming languages, or anything else) past a certain complexity has quirks. Getting used to the quirks is part of learning the software.

Massively changing large swathes of your built-in software is bad for users! I get that it'd be suicide to say "OK, permanent feature freeze... now," but big changes to the UI on apps that are (to many normal users) fundamental to using Android break the user's understanding of their use, often amounting to months of acclimation down the drain.

It's very frustrating.

72deluxe4• 12 years ago

I too have been using Android since the G1 (I still have it for testing on!) and I would agree that the introduction of new paradigms/ways of interacting with apps (seemingly introduced every I/O every year) is frustrating.

The hamburger menu is in fashion. Then it isn't. Swiping from the left is, then it isn't. All of the examples in their design spec of how NOT to do things was precisely what they did on 2.x.

I know you have to be seen to be "innovating" for attention-deficit new phone buyers, but living in a world of constantly shifting sands just means it's hard to see from all the dust blowing around in your face.

jordanthoms2• 12 years ago

I don't see it the same way - Android's been behind the other smartphone operating systems in UI quality, and has had to iterate quickly in 2.x, 4.x and 5 in order to catch up. As they reach a point where Android has as good or better user interface as the competition (I think they're close to that now), the rate of change will most likely slow down.

oneeyedpigeon3• 12 years ago

"A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them." - John C. Maxwell

malkia• 12 years ago

Is there any 3rd party product that can sync gmail with apple's calendar?

I have google phone/Chromebook, and my wife - iPhone/OSX. So I haven't really looked, but we were thinking of starting to use more and more the calender to sync up with things we need to do.

Any recommendations?

kevruger• 12 years ago

I don't think you need any 3rd party products. I use an iPhone, an Android phone for work and use a Macbook Pro and my main calendar is my Gmail Google calendar which syncs among all 3 devices without any 3rd party software. I guess you may just need to know how to set it up on iOS and Mac products.

kentosi• 12 years ago

One thing I dearly miss from when Google Calendar first came out was the ability to type in text to create an event.

Eg - Typing "Dinner tomorrow at 7:30pm at Foobar restaurant" would automatically create an event with the correct lexical components.

It looks like they're finally reintroducing this back.

_acme• 12 years ago

How does one use the task component of google calendar on an iOS device? How are google keep's tasks integrated with my google calendar?

A new day for Google Calendar

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