[chandler-users] General Chandler thoughts...

[Dan Dawson]

First of all, I just wanted to say I love the concept of Chandler and  
the system is off to a great start!

Generally, I'm kind of addicted to my calendar, started using a Palm  
back in 97 or so, use Pimlico Software's DateBk6 on the Palm that has  
some awesome features I still haven't seen on other calendars  
(Floating Events) and then as soon as I switched back to Mac, used  
iCal and had them all playing nicely.

I work with several small groups of people, for some we share camera  
equipment and record when each person has it checked out, we invite  
each other to work on certain projects, and even at the office we  
schedule group meetings and wanted to have a general corporate  
calendar of events.

Of course our IT guy is planning on a full deployment of Exchange  
but... well, I like alternatives ;-)  So a few thoughts, starting  
with specifics and then going to general philosophy, all with the  
overarching view that your team has done a great job and the future  
is bright!

* I created several osaf.us accounts for a few of our users.  Created  
calendars for each (either blank or importing iCal data)  The  
complaints from my general users are slow load times (Two on XP and  
one Intel Mac) and lack of a month view.  I keep reminding them that  
future releases will certainly address the issues, and that at this  
point we're just testing the software and methods out.

* I use http://icalx.com/ for sharing my read-only iCal data with  
other people in my group, they can easily import them in to their own  
iCal, etc.  Of course, I can retain this functionality with Chandler  
and have even more options which is great.  For syncing my two Macs I  
was using MySync which was free and did an excellent job of syncing  
my calendars and contacts bi-directionally between my machines.  Mark/ 
Space bought them, and that was the end of free, so I'm currently  
trying out .Mac for free until I decide to purchase that (uugh...) or  
pay $50 for SyncTogether.

The problem I immediately noticed was that my Cosmo URL's in iCal  
break as soon as I do the second .Mac sync!  In the calendar URL that  
I'm subscribed to, everything past the question mark goes missing  
after the second sync.  I know this is an Apple problem, but if they  
don't fix it... you might have to address a work around on your side.

* Another thought for the future, a side project that wouldn't  
actually be a part of this project at all.  Originally to let people  
read and write one shared calendar, we used Google Calendars with a  
shared login, well, have you guys seen Spanning Sync?  It brings bi- 
directional calendar editing for Google right in to iCal!  It looks  
like an excellent piece of software from my limimted testing.  It  
would be great if someone would build one to support Cosmo in iCal  
for people who don't want to (yet) switch from iCal to Chandler.

* And this is where I really don't want to step on any toes, I'm not  
directly involved in this project in any way, and haven't even been  
monitoring the list for more than a month or so... but here's my  
random thoughts... iCal is an awesome application, it does what it  
does very very well, and it's simple to use, and it's relatively  
fast.  It has a large user base due partially to those reasons.

Chandler is extremely promising, it brings us the ability to do  
things that iCal can't, and probably won't do.  I look forward to  
becoming a full-time Chandler user as it continues to grow and  
develop.  But it does seem that the project has been underway for  
quite a long time, and though there are TONS of great ideas for the  
future... the primary goal should be to make a good, functional  
calendar, and add other features only once that first step is  
completed.  Some items I'd set as some priorities:

* Speed Enhancements in almost all areas

* Clean and Simple UI - There are still icons that I don't really  
know what they do or how they work. My fault for not reading  
documentation but... I never read the docs on Google Cal or iCal  
either ;-)

* Month view of the calendar - Every paper wall calendar in every  
home or office is a month view...

* Drop or hide some of the "features" if people happen to not want  
them, and probably reduce their priorities on development until  
primary features are more operational.  It is *very* doubtful most of  
my users will consider switching their Mail applications to Chandler  
any time soon, I love Mac Mail, I loved Thunderbird before that...  
it's going to have to be a major advantage for me to consider leaving  
one of those for a new application.  Perhaps a "lite" version of  
Chandler that was Calendar and Tasks only would be faster to develop  
and deploy to a group of "real world" users.  An easy to use cross- 
platform calendar could really take off it would seem, especially if  
it played well with iCal and Exchange, and helped people realize on  
their own that it was *better* than both of those through use and  
functionality.

I understand the powerful nature of having one monster application  
that "does it all" but Calendars, Mail, RSS, Tasks, Flickr searching  
and Amazon Wish Lists... all could be powerful but I'd aim for  
proving the product in the market before going to that level of  
detail.  Doing one thing "right" is much more powerful than doing a  
lot of things in a mediocre fashion when it comes to winning new users.

Of course I do have my own wish lists in addition to some of the above:

* Custom calendar colors
* Floating events (they move forward day by day if not completed on  
the previous day)
* Better searching of events
* More sharing preferences (Share title only, title and notes, busy  
only, etc)

I hope this kind of feedback might in some small way be helpful,  
again, I wanted to encourage the whole team, and if ever I learned  
some Python I'd love to be a more direct part in helping out.  If  
ever I could be of assistance in providing feedback or thoughts don't  
hesitate to let me know.  I will continue trying to spread Chandler  
through our building user by user and hopefully get enough users on  
it that we might avoid the Exchange server all together :-)

--Dan Dawson