Calendar Soon to be Included in Default Mozilla Builds

Tuesday January 7th, 2003

Mike Potter has posted a message to netscape.public.mozilla.calendar about the integration of Calendar with Mozilla. It is generally felt that Calendar is ready to be included in the default Mozilla builds and work is progressing to make this a reality. You can install the latest version of Calendar (currently Windows and Linux only) from the Calendar project page.

Full Article...

#1 Great News, but ...

by peterlairo

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 6:46 AM

until bugs 177279 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177279) and 155882 (http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155882) are fixed, Calendar remains pretty useless for me.

Basically, alarms are somewhat (and therefore critically, IMO) unreliable, don't even work at all for certain conditions (which are common and important for me), and don't even exist for Tasks (ToDo's).

Please note that I am not complaining, merely pointing out an (IMO) important deficiency.

#6 Re: Great News, but ...

by bandido

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 9:24 AM

Your links are wrong. For bug 177279 it should be: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=177279

For bug 155882 ir should be: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155882

#7 Re: Great News, but ...

by peterlairo

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 11:57 AM

Thanks!

I have no idea how that happened. :-\

#32 Re: Re: Great News, but ...

by klee

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 5:17 AM

Links only work in mozillazine comments if they are in inserted without parenthesis, e.g.:

http://www.mozilla.org/

Else the parenthesis are considered as part of the link:

(http://www.mozilla.org/)

#2 Is it a Calendar?

by LPetrazickis

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 7:43 AM

Is this an actual calendar or just a demo of calendar technology possible to program in Mozilla and thus not needing anything resembling a good interface or removal of feature cruft because third-party people who implement their own calendars are supposed to do that and not the original developers? :P

#4 Re: Is it a Calendar?

by peterlairo

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 8:04 AM

It's a "real" calendar. Why don't (didn't) you go see/test for yourself: http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/

#8 Re: Is it a Calendar?

by bzbarsky

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 12:01 PM

It's written by a company for which it's one of the main products. It is not written by mozilla.org. Hence it's a real product, not a technology preview.

#3 Very cool.

by Kovu

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 7:58 AM

I can hardly wait. I know you can turn on the calendar, so I've checked it out; just getting people using will be a big boon (to the amount of bugs and, hopefully, coders).

#5 Palm Synchronization....?

by bsnyder

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 9:10 AM

Hey all,

Right now I have a PC on my desktop simply for Outlook syncing to my palm for contacts/calendar/todo/notes.

I saw from the FAQ on calendar that it doesnt sync to the palm, is there a TBD for this to be complete. Once calendar can manage my contacts/todo/notes, with addressbook managing my contacts i can really get rid of windows.

Thanx, --brian

#55 Re: Palm sync

by olo

Thursday January 9th, 2003 8:22 AM

Syncing the task list is bug 176730. http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=176730

#9 I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by prokosch

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 12:59 PM

... shouldn't additional components rather get removed from default build (Composer? Download Manager?)? Making additional components easily installable instead? Also into the user profile? Secure uninstall for components? Upgrade of Mozilla without touching personal add-ons? (don't have the bug numbers handy, sorry) After that, nodoby would care whether something is included or not!

PS: Yes, I know I will be able to choose which components to install, the question is rather theoretical (or even rhetorical :)), Debian will have it separated anyway....

PPS: Please, don't come with answers like "DIY" - if I could, I would have done so - I'm just politely (I hope) asking...

PPPS: I used to not notice the weight of Mozilla earlier, but looks onto Galeon or Phoenix just give me the impression of Mozilla being an overloaded boat, which is ready to sink with its cargo...

#13 Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by WillyWonka

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 3:05 PM

That's why the GRE is being made. It's note done yet though, so we have to wait.

#16 Re: Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by ezh

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:12 PM

I do not understand the GRE... What is the point of it when I need to download a whole package anyway (no one can be sure it is already on the computer)? Can someone explane it a bit?

#26 Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by WillyWonka

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:57 PM

It will be just like the Java Runtime Engine. You download it once and leave it on your hard drive. You wouldn't want to have to download the JRE from sun every time you wanted to run a java applet. This is the same. Gecko is installed on the machine and other programs can load it up and use it. It avoids having to download the entire package and stuff like calendar can be made smaller and hook into it.

#27 Re: Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by ezh

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 6:29 PM

But that's sucks...

"To run Mozilla you need to downliad and install this, this and this." Who will do this? All packages will include this GRE by default. Where is the difference? Also what about new versions of GRE components? When I have say GRE 1.0 and the downloaded program says it will run only with 1.0.1.1.1.

CAn someone explane the full plan how all thise situations will be handled?

#29 Re: Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by peterlairo

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 12:24 AM

You raise some excellent quetions about how versions of GRE will be handled by various apps, and that most apps will likely include their current version of GRE *anyhow*. I would be *very* interested in a thoughful explanation of this issue.

BTW. it's spelled "explain", not "explane". ;)

#33 GRE compared to JRE

by alfredkayser

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 5:25 AM

If you compare GRE to JRE, then two options for distribution of apps apply: * Complete install, including the GRE/JRE, optionally without GRE/JRE (if you are sure you have it) * Install as 'applet' (JRE/.JAR) or as 'extension' (.XPI).

Personnally, I prefer the second, whereby the GRE/JRE function as the 'base' or 'foundation' on which applications are installed. using the .XPI as distribution method, installation is defined by the GRE (and not by the application in combination with the OS). The GRE should provide an environment from which the GRE based applications can be managed (removed, updated, authorisation, etc).

#54 Re: GRE compared to JRE

by webgremlin

Thursday January 9th, 2003 8:20 AM

>> installation is defined by the GRE (and not by the application in combination with the OS). The GRE should provide an environment from which the GRE based applications can be managed (removed, updated, authorisation, etc).

No, no, no. As useful as that would be, if we're talking about real applications and not just browser extensions, the cost is higher than the benefit. Having a special environment for launching/removing/updating/authorizing (*any* of these functions, much worse all of them) is forcing the user to know about what underlying technology runs their applications. The user does not care and should not have to. Java Web Start works as you suggest, and what it means is I have to start "Java Web Start" to use any one of four programs that are not related in any way that's important to a user.

Taking this organizational scheme to its logical extension would mean that on my W2K notebook I'd have seperate management environments for: -Programs based on Gecko -Programs based on Java -Programs using the common VB Runtime -Programs using the common MS C++ dlls -Programs created in Visual Pascal -Old 16-bit executables -etc.

But it is unacceptable that any user should have to know or care which backend technology their calendar (and every other program on their computer) uses. Presumably someone who downloads a calendar or a browser or an email client or an IDE wants to *use a calendar*, not manage a platform.

-wg <><

P.S. - If there are any bugzilla feature requests about this, could someone point me to them?

#35 Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by hfx_ben

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 7:51 AM

> shouldn't additional components rather get removed from default build? Yes!

> Making additional components easily installable instead? Yes!

> Also into the user profile? ehr ... Yes!

> Secure uninstall for components? Only responsible, this. So, Yes!!

> Upgrade of Mozilla without touching personal add-ons? Yes!

I noticed that the latest nightly of Phoenix uses a really ghastly default theme ... swift move, Exlax!

#48 Re: I'm really sorry for asking, but...

by sime

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 3:50 PM

Its a broswer suite

#10 Great!

by pbreit

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 2:21 PM

Great! Who the eff needs a calendar in their browser? Mozilla screwed up big time in not focusing on the browser and now has even lost Apple. Including mail, news, chat, compose and calendar in the project wasted valuable, precious development/management/testing/etc. resources that could have instead gone towards making gecko lean, fast, standard comliant and stable. See Konqeror market share rising above moz in the near future.

#11 buildbar

by mattdm

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 2:25 PM

Is this a troll or a joke? It's hard to tell.

#15 Outlook replacement

by bmacfarland

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:01 PM

Plus an integrated calendar is pretty much 80% what is needed for many windows users to replace Outlook. Right now small companies use Outlook for mail and get meeting scheduling as part of the package. Moz doesn't give that with it's mail, so my Moz e-mail is sitting dormant without an attached account.

#18 not a troll

by pbreit

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:36 PM

Not trolling at all. If you're paying attention you'll know that Apple just released a browser for Macs based on KDE/KHTML/Konqueror code.

Is there any good reason to try and displace Outlook? Why not focus on browsing?

Mozilla made the classic mistake of lousy scope management and now 4.5 years later it still doesn't have a superior browser. But it sure does have a bunch of superfluous components that have no relation to web browsing! And if people think all the components were developed independently and thus had no negative bearing on gecko development, they don't truly understand projects.

#22 ummm...

by bmacfarland

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:41 PM

I'd like to replace Outlook because it doesn't run on as many OSes as Mozilla does. Meaning that if a small company wants to easily schedule meeting they are more likely to choose the OS with the software to support it. I'm not saying this should be Moziila's place, maybe it's OpenOffice's or no one's, but if it's 80% there, go the rest of the way.

#34 Re: ummm...

by klee

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 5:27 AM

Concerning OpenOffice and Mozilla: OpenOffice will use Mozilla Calendar - see http://oeone.com/news/archives/20020822.html

#36 Thanks...

by bmacfarland

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 9:00 AM

I didn't know that. This kind of furthers, my thinking that a calendar is very useful to variety of applications if it can be hooked in properly and responsibly.

#28 yes you are

by 2of3

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 6:55 PM

> it still doesn't have a superior browser

Wrong. Any webdeveloper using the w3c-standards knows that Mozilla is FAR superior then e.g. IE 6.0. It is also better than Opera 7.0b, which seems to turn out quite nice. Also the usability and the combined features (e.g. pop-up blocking, tabs, bayesian spam-filter) makes Mozilla Nr. 1.

> And if people think all the components were developed independently and thus had no negative bearing on gecko development, they don't truly understand projects.

Wrong again. Read the statement of Mike Potter in your thread. Seems that your *opinion* is just based on assumptions & hearsay.

#12 Re: Great!

by mikeypotter

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 2:59 PM

Actually, that's completely wrong. I'm the main calendar developer, and I could never have anything to do with Gecko. I've developed webpages for the past 7 years or so, and hardly know any C++. The calendar is *not* being developed by people at Netscape... Its being developed by people at OEone, with contributions from outside developers. This project has hardly taken any resources away (if any) from those working on Gecko. Mike

#14 Re: Great!

by morg

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 3:11 PM

The calendar will be useful IMHO for many things in the Mozilla platform, especially when it is combined with other features.

Bookmarks that are opened at a time set by the calendar

Mail messages sent at a time set by the calendar

Plus, it would just be nice to have a good calendar in the project.

#17 Re: Great!

by ezh

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:15 PM

Open Office planed to make an calendar, but after they decided to integrate this mozilla calendar. So we will have an office, browser, mail, calendar integrated products! That's great I believe....

#19 Re: Great!

by ruudd

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:56 PM

So we will have an office, browser, mail, calendar integrated products! That's great I believe....

I think not, the power of *NIX is the fact that for every action there is a program. so that means that 1 program is highly optimised to do 1 thing. That is a good thing. That's also why I use Phoenix: it is good in browsing, nothing more (well eating memory 8-).

#21 Re: Re: Great!

by ezh

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:16 PM

I use mozilla for reading/posting news...

And you may always not install the calendar etc...

#23 I'll give you...

by bmacfarland

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:46 PM

...that I'm not sure mail should be bundled with a web browser, but mail should be bundled with a calendar, just because outlook is 100 times more powerful with them integrated. It's one case where the sum of the whole add up to more than the sum of the parts.

#20 ??

by pbreit

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 4:59 PM

Bookmarks that are opened at a time set by the calendar Uhmm...what would you do with this? And does this really require integration into the browser or can a calendar app just prompt the opening of a URL in whatever the default browser is? Mail messages sent at a time set by the calendar Same argument plus I also don't think a mail client has any business being bundled with a web browser. it would just be nice Great! It would be nice. Nice enough to wait 4.5 years for 1% market share?

#37 How about...

by bmacfarland

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 9:11 AM

At your 10:30 teleconfernce, your calendar asks you whether you want to open up any web documents in tabs (if it's a browser that supports tabs) sent by the meeting organizer via e-mail. Suddenly everyone is on the same page, and there's none of that, "click on the 4th link in the e-mail I sent" or "go to www dot... slash... or was that a dot... html... or was that asp" over the phone.

#38 Sold!

by pbreit

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 1:34 PM

I'm sold! I want this calendar-integrated browser now! Oops, I forgot I'm the only one using it so this won't work.

#42 but...

by bmacfarland

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:19 PM

...not if you company standardized on it. How long would it take for a new company or a small company? Ten minutes. If it were built, they would come.

I'll restate that I didn't see the reason to bundle mail, newsreader, and browser in the first place, except that they all share the common Internet theme. However, mail, calendar, address book make sense to me. So then should we unbundle the mail from the browser and put these together. Or everything separate? What's the suggestion?

#43 gecko

by pbreit

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:23 PM

I think if they had put all their energy into Gecko only, we'd all be a lot better off as far as marketshare and browser quality go.

#49 Re: gecko

by FrodoB

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 4:19 PM

Absolutely! We'd have a raw HTML/XML rendering engine that isn't a browser! And as we all know, if we produce no browser, we can't have produced a bad browser, so this is the best possible choice.

#50 Re: gecko

by asa

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 6:29 PM

If we had put all our effort into "Gecko only" we wouldn't exist today. Do you remember before there was a Gecko? There was a full open source browser suite before there was Gecko. Then there was Gecko, no buttons, no features, just a rendering component, Gecko, not even part of the browser yet. Were you testing it then? Were you contributing patches then? I don't think you have enough history to make your claims. If, when Gecko came on the scene, all of the people not working on Gecko (and not capable or interested in working on Gecko) would have walked away leaving just Gecko developers the project would have died immediately.

We'd have thrown away all the development and testing that happened because Mozilla was more than "Gecko only". Mozilla attracted lots of testing (tens of thousands of people with Bugzilla accounts filing bugs, hundreds of thousands of people downloading milestone builds) because it provided people with a real product and not just "Gecko only" which would be completely unusable except by someone willing to embed it in a larger application. We got all this testing because we gave people features they wanted.

But more importantly, most of the developers working on this project are not now and have never been Gecko developers. The number of people that develop the core rendering component is small and will always be small because it's very complex. Not taking a contribution of a Mozilla-based Calendar client or any other not-"Gecko only" feature wouldn't have magically added to the number of Gecko developers. You simply don't understand how this project works, who works on what, and why.

You can feel free to disagree and you're free to armchair quarterback and say "if they had put all their energy into Gecko only, we'd all be a lot better off" but if you really think that the project would still exist if it was nothing more than Gecko, a rendering component, then you just don't know what your talking about. Not only would it not exist today if it was just Gecko, but it never would have existed in the first place.

Your comments sound to me like this: You were invited to a dinner party. Upon tasting the main course you tell the host that if only she had told other guests not to bring side dishes and deserts that the main course would have been much better. Not only does that not make sense, it's a bit rude.

--Asa

#60 Re: gecko

by tigger_lv1

Friday January 10th, 2003 3:40 AM

bah, really - i don't think than anyone should care about market share. i think, that if YOU would start to contribute to gecko, we'd all be a lot better off as far as marketshare and browser quality go.

#39 Minority?

by pbreit

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 1:37 PM

If there's anyone in the minority, it is the paltry number of Moz users!!

If I were making strategic decisions for Moz I would have built nothing more than Gecko and it would be running in AOL and Safari by now.

#40 Re: Minority?

by AlexBishop

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 1:51 PM

"If I were making strategic decisions for Moz I would have built nothing more than Gecko and it would be running in AOL and Safari by now."

You're funny.

Alex

#41 Not trying to be.

by pbreit

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:11 PM

If Gecko 1.0 were released 2.5 years ago and was high performance, stable, standards-compliant and lean, I believe it is very likely it would have made it into the AOL Windows/Mac clients and onto MacOS by now.

#44 Re: Not trying to be.

by AlexBishop

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:36 PM

"If Gecko 1.0 were released 2.5 years ago and was high performance, stable, standards-compliant and lean, I believe it is very likely it would have made it into the AOL Windows/Mac clients and onto MacOS by now."

Gecko is used in AOL for Mac OS X.

Alex

#46 Get a grip

by pbreit

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:57 PM

>>a message to netscape.public.mozilla.calendar about the integration of Calendar with Mozilla<<

Not sure whose hearing aid needs to be turned up here.

#45 Re: Not trying to be.

by flacco

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 2:44 PM

>>If Gecko 1.0 were released 2.5 years ago and was high performance, stable, standards-compliant and lean, I believe it is very likely it would have made it into the AOL Windows/Mac clients and onto MacOS by now.<<

This has fuck-all to do with the calendar project.

Listen closely: THE CALENDAR HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ANY OTHER PART OF MOZILLA. OK? If there were never a calendar project, it would not make the slightest difference to the rest of Mozilla. The calendar project is a SEPARATE development effort by DIFFERENT PEOPLE. Alright?

So if you have some kind of seething resentment over the direction Mozilla has taken, fine, but stop implying that the calendar project has anything to do with it.

#30 Great!

by peterlairo

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 12:31 AM

I personally prefer that related tasks be as integrated as possible. And communication (e-mail & calendar events) and browsing are all *highly* related (IMO).

I respect your opinion, but am very glad you are in the minority and are not making strategic decisions for mozilla. :-P

#51 You want fast? Try K-Meleon, Galeon or Chimera

by ndebord

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 11:58 PM

Gecko-based engines are inherently fast. It's all just different strokes for different folks.

Some like 7 course meals, others a sandwich to go.

<g> N

#52 I disagree

by johann_p

Thursday January 9th, 2003 7:22 AM

The integration of browser, mail, and calendar could lead to some great and very innovative features which could make Mozilla a killer app for corporate users, business users, and users like me. Unfortunately, all of the real innovative features, and even many of the standard features present in other mail or calendar apps are still missing from Mozilla. So it is a potential that might one day lead to something real innovative. It might also endlessly remain on a level that will make many users prefer other, more usable apps for Mail and Calendar though. We will see. In any way, including Calendar in the trunk is a good step to motivate more people to contribute.

#24 Compare with ATnotes

by Yui

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:48 PM

I am not a troll. ATnotes has everything I want. Why should I download calendar? If you want a superb calendar system make Moz Calendar better then ATnotes as well as Outlook. It is also free. Then I will use it.

#25 Compare with ATnotes

by Yui

Tuesday January 7th, 2003 5:50 PM

#31 Because it can be used for real operating systems?

by johann_p

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 1:52 AM

ATnotes and Outlook only run on Windows. Mozilla calendar will run XP on all platform Mozilla runs, and these are a lot. There are also good reasons to combine a calendar with a browser and mail - ultimately a lot of nice features might become possible.

If you dont like Mozilla calendar you are free to either contribute to make it better or not use it. Mozilla and related components have become what they are not because people were complaining and whining what other programs might be better, but becuase people where helping to make it better. So unless you have something constructive to contribute (and be it only an idea), your post is not much more than trolling.

#57 constructive?

by mlippert

Thursday January 9th, 2003 4:55 PM

Well I think you're being a little hard on Yui. I agree he was a little antagonistic, but he did contribute something constructive, namely a calendar app that he considers to be very good.

I've never even heard of ATnotes before now, and now I know its name and that someone considers it good. That's constructive for the development of the Mozilla calendar because it gives another comparison point for UI and features.

It would have been even more constructive if Yui had actually stated what particular features ATnotes has that he considers essential, as well as the parts of ATnotes he feels could use work.

#47 Re: Get a grip

by flacco

Wednesday January 8th, 2003 3:28 PM

>> Not sure whose hearing aid needs to be turned up here.

Well, not mine. On the other hand, you posted seven messages on this thread, most of them saying pretty much the same thing, even though people have pointed out to you that the calendar project takes no resources away from the browser project.

Not to mention this little gem:

>> Is there any good reason to try and displace Outlook?

uh, yeah, there most definitely is.

#53 No way to print?

by johann_p

Thursday January 9th, 2003 8:18 AM

One of the most basic features of any app seems to be still missing: ability to print. Without this, the calendar will be unusable for many.

#56 Calendar doesn't install

by froydnj

Thursday January 9th, 2003 9:53 AM

Is anybody else having this problem? I go to the Calendar project page and install through the XPI file. Everything looks like it completes successfully, so I close and restart Mozilla. There is no "Calendar" item in the Window menu; starting mozilla with the `-calendar' option gives errors about not being able to find a XUL file. Moving the file to the requested location leads to more errors.

Any pointers?

#59 Re: Calendar doesn't install

by zob

Friday January 10th, 2003 3:26 AM

Same for me with mozilla 1.2.1/Linux/x86 ; when I launch 'mozilla -calendar' it is looking for '[mozilla_install_dir]/chrome/packages/core/calendar.xul' - but 'chrome/packages' does not exist. Very odd too : when executing 'grep "chrome/packages/core/" *' in '[mozilla_install_dir]/components', 'libchrome.so' matches.

#63 Mon Bidoux

by offmdan

Thursday June 12th, 2003 5:46 AM

I wish too someone could give us a tip on how to resolve this problem!

#58 Calendar with Phoenix?

by quam

Thursday January 9th, 2003 9:28 PM

I'm an avid Phoenix user, and really miss the use of Calendar when I had Mozilla instead. Has someone looked into having Calendar as 'Phoenix compatible' ? I guess it would need to be a stand-alone app (?), which it obviously is not... hrmph.

#61 Sync between different calendar

by _alex

Saturday January 11th, 2003 8:58 AM

Is there a simple way to synchronize different calendar on different computer ? For me, a simple thing would be a calendar managed like cvs with update/commit done automaticaly on startup/exit.

#62 So, where is it ???

by drosoph

Wednesday January 22nd, 2003 3:38 PM

Any progress on the Calendar in the daily builds yet ???