Windows Vista Sidebar gadget for Google Calendar
August 22nd, 2008N.B.: version 2.0 of this gadget is now available!
I had spent some time searching for a good Windows Vista sidebar gadget that displayed a few upcoming Google Calendar events, when I noticed somewhere that, in fact, sidebar gadgets are actually just HTML/CSS/JavaScript snippets. Because I could not find any really good gadget that did what I wanted, I decided to write my own. I hereby proudly present: The Calendar v1.0 .
It will display the first six upcoming Google Calendar events, along with their start and end dates and times, displaying the latter whenever this is appropriate. Each event’s title provides a link to the appropriate Google Calendar event detail page. When you hover your mouse over the gadget, a small calendar icon will appear in the bottom right corner of the gadget. Clicking it will bring up Google Calendar in your default browser.
Before the first use, you must enter your @gmail.com address and password and a desired update interval in the gadget’s settings form.
Below are some screenshots.
The last screenshot shows two hovering functions. First, when hovering over the title of an event, its full title is shown in a tooltip. Second, when hovering anywhere over the gadget, a calendar icon is shown that links to Google Calendar. Note that Windows for some reason does not include the cursor in screenshots, so that is why there is no ‘hand’ shown in the picture.
Let me know what you think! Of course, it is free software and open source, so distribute it as you like, as long as you give me (Eelke Spaak) the credit of developing it and always provide a link to my website. Since .gadget files are actually ZIP archives, you can just extract it with WinZip or whatever to obtain the source scripts.
N.B.: version 2.0 of this gadget is now available!
August 25th, 2008 at 23:55:49
nice tool~!
it would be better if there is a “Quick Add” function I think.
August 26th, 2008 at 22:02:24
So I really like this, as it is better than any other gadget that i’ve seen so far. However, it would be nice if it could read other calendars besides my main one, as I have several separate google calendars set up. I’m still definitely sticking with it for now unless I can find something better
August 27th, 2008 at 18:17:39
Excellent! I’ve been looking for exactly this for a long time. Thanks a lot!
Only one thing is lacking… multiple calendar support. Is this a possible addition?
August 27th, 2008 at 19:01:35
I forgot to mention that it’s nice to use The Calendar in combination with iCalendarGadget (supports multiple calendars) because it displays a 4-week view. It’s nice because I can view future events this way.
I decided to merge my other calendars into my main calendar, so I could use your excellent gadget. (At least until multiple calendar support is added)
I just don’t show my main calendar on the web page.
August 28th, 2008 at 02:32:35
Ive been trying to make something similar to this. If you recall on the stock calendar gadget, when you click on a date the number appears larger, instead of having the number appear i was wandering if you could just have it list the events scheduled for that day. Maybe you could have a calendar view and the view you have now in the preferences box. By the way very nice gadget you have here, i wish i knew how to work with javascript, i only know html.
September 1st, 2008 at 18:35:38
Good widget, but capable of development.
September 1st, 2008 at 21:20:54
Thanks for the helpful comments everyone! Sorry I did not respond earlier, but I did not quite realize that Wordpress was keeping comments in the moderation queue :S Quite a newbie mistake, I know… I have now set up the blog so comments get auto-posted once they pass Akismet :)
@xbtsw: a ‘quick add’ function is definitely something I am considering, but (and this is technical talk) the gadget works with Google Calendar JSON data, and I don’t know if you can post stuff using JSON or if this has to be in Atom XML. But anyway, it would certainly be nice.
@Ujas and David: multiple calendar support will certainly be something in the next version. I’m still wondering on how to implement it though: having users select calendars in a list in the settings form (thus restricting them to only be able to choose calendars associated with their Google account), or allowing users to enter Google Calendar feed URLs in the settings form? Which would you prefer?
Thanks again!
September 1st, 2008 at 22:03:10
Super gadget! Eenvoudig, en meest belangrijke: hij werkt! The first vista gadget for google calendar that really works good! Keep up the good work! Considering the multiple calendar support, the best option I think is to work with the associated calendars, so there’s one source were you configure your multiple calendars and that’s through the settings of your google account. If you decide to want more calendars to be displayed through the gadget you simple associate them with your account. Thanks for the good work!
September 2nd, 2008 at 09:00:17
Hi,
It seems like to be a great add-on for my desktop, but I can’t get it work. Does it automatically refresh after the time you set in the options menu? Could you please support me.
Best Regards,
September 2nd, 2008 at 17:35:42
@Ruud: What problems are you experiencing? It should indeed automatically refresh after the number of minutes you set in the settings form.
September 2nd, 2008 at 17:54:57
I like the first option…
“having users select calendars in a list in the settings form (thus restricting them to only be able to choose calendars associated with their Google account)”
… better, but is it possible to also have the option to add another user/password entry if fully-shared calendars won’t work?
It’s easier to select the calendars you want instead of copying a private feed link.
September 14th, 2008 at 21:05:11
Hallo,
hoe ver sta je al met de multiple calendar support (onder 1 account)?
Dit is het beste gadget dat ik gevonden heb!
keep up the good work!
September 15th, 2008 at 23:55:23
nice gadget, great job works perfect! been searching everywere for something like this
thanks!!
September 16th, 2008 at 00:47:33
this is pretty cool, just what i was looking for… is there a way to increase the number of events that are shown either by a certain number of events or certain number of days/weeks/months etc?
September 24th, 2008 at 09:57:06
I just installed this gadget and already love it. Can’t wait for multiple calendar feature. You can set it so that we can choose calendars associated with our Google account. That would be the easiest. Thanks!
September 28th, 2008 at 16:53:56
Thanks,
is a very good piece of software.
September 30th, 2008 at 21:58:48
Would it be possible to make it so that current events for today are in bold? That way it is more noticeable?
October 5th, 2008 at 05:32:12
This gadget is actually better than the one google is offering!! You should be proud of your work!! As others have mentioned above the only thing I’d love to see is the capability of adding multiple calendars so I can see both my work and home schedules in the one place! Thanks again!!!!
October 17th, 2008 at 17:44:25
I have an alignment problem. The other gadgets I have are centered on the sidebar space left to right. Your gadget is left justified and looks misaligned. I know this is not a huge problem as it deals strictly with appearance, but could you either make it center itself or expand so the margins are equal.
October 19th, 2008 at 12:18:37
Thank you for this gadget, which basically is the only usable one!
I have one problem with it: it delays my schedule of 7 hours.
I exported my outlook calendar with the right time zone, imported in google calendar which also has the right time zone and so far no problem, it shows the right time. But your gadget shows my event with a delay of 7 hours. Please help me!! What did i do wrong? :)
October 20th, 2008 at 16:34:09
i found the solution to my problem.
the time zone in the general settings of the calendar was correct, but the time zone of the calendar itself was different.
changed it and voila!
October 22nd, 2008 at 06:57:11
great gadget. my time comes up in 24 hour format rather than 12 hour format. is this a standard setting of the application or something that i can change on my end? thanks.
October 22nd, 2008 at 08:46:49
@Eric: the 24-hour format is a standard setting of the application. However, I could include a 24/12hr setting in the next version, would you prefer that?
The good news is that, yesterday, I actually (*finally*) started work on the next version, that will feature, among other things, multiple calendar support.
October 22nd, 2008 at 18:29:59
yes, 12 hour format would be great. thanks for a really useful gadget!
October 24th, 2008 at 20:31:37
PLEASE, PLEASE make a 12 hour format version. I am not in the “army” and rather use 12 hour format just like in google. Thanks!
October 27th, 2008 at 19:28:30
I modified the main script in it, so it is in a 12 hour format (e.g. 1:30p)
Download it here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/158080470/thecalendar.gadget.html
(.gadget files are really just .zip files… so rename it, extract and modify it if you want it differently)
October 27th, 2008 at 19:31:22
Oops, I didn’t see the post that Eelke was going to make it an option in settings. (well, until that’s done, you can use that link above)
SWEET! Multiple calendar support!
October 31st, 2008 at 00:01:34
I fixed a couple mistakes…
12:00a instead of 0:00a
12:00p instead of 12:00a
http://rapidshare.com/files/159147503/thecalendar.gadget.html
Again, this is until the next release (which will be much better I’m sure)
November 4th, 2008 at 13:06:26
can’t wait…
I check your blog almost daily
November 12th, 2008 at 02:45:13
Hey could you please re-upload the file again? This is the error I got from rapidshare
“This file is neither allocated to a Premium Account, or a Collector’s Account, and can therefore only be downloaded 10 times.
This limit is reached.
To download this file, the uploader either needs to transfer this file into his/her Collector’s Account, or upload the file again. The file can later be moved to a Collector’s Account. The uploader just needs to click the delete link of the file to get further information”
Thank you!
November 18th, 2008 at 09:37:35
Is it possible or is there a way I could be alerted when the next version of this software becomes availble with the multi-calendar capability? The software is of little use to me right now due to only functioning with one of my google calendars but if it could support multiple, it would be hugely useful to me and I’d love to know when it comes out with this ability.
November 18th, 2008 at 17:31:56
@ Twist and everyone else: I think the next version will be finished sometime this week, probably this weekend.
November 19th, 2008 at 15:45:59
[...] « Windows Vista Sidebar gadget for Google Calendar [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 07:47:46
[...] that Google provides. Something like this already existed and I did not want to just duplicate this gadget. The second version of the same gadget is much better and uses the method listed just [...]
January 19th, 2009 at 16:00:08
[...] - bookmarked by 6 members originally found by lethann on 2008-12-26 Eelke Spaak » Blog Archive » Windows Vista Sidebar gadget for… http://www.eelkespaak.nl/2008/08/windows-vista-sidebar-gadget-for-google-calendar/ - bookmarked by [...]
February 1st, 2009 at 16:40:04
Txs so much for this app. it was exactly what I was looking for. It´s working perfectly on windows 7… waiting for the upgrades to come. Again: Thank you!!!
July 6th, 2009 at 21:05:22
Thank you. This is really a great tool. Works like a charm.
If you ever update this tool again, I have a suggestion for a little change.
I tried to implement it myself today, but did not get it working…
If the computer goes offline and the gadget tries to update, all entries are cleared. At least for me it would be preferable if the shown entries in the calender will remain until the next succesful download. Also a message like “Last sucessful connection at 10:30″ would be helpful.
Keep up the good work!
André
August 21st, 2011 at 20:40:45
Can you add meetings or tasks comment show to entries, when you point on them with mouse ?
Right now , when I point my entry , that doen’t show it’s comment, everytime I have to click that entry,
thanks in advance and thanks a lot for this