The Calendar v2.0 released (updated)!
November 19th, 2008Update: the version available from this page is now v2.1, and includes debugging info messages (can be turned on in Settings).
By popular request, I have made a new version of my Windows Sidebar Gadget for Google Calendar. The following (requested) features are included in this new version:
- Multiple calendar support!
- Option for using Google Calendar’s color info for coloring the calendar items
- Option for using 12-hour (am/pm) time format, instead of 24-hour (though why anyone would NOT want to use 24-hour format is a mystery to me… oh well :) )
- Slight adjustment of the background image that makes the gadget align a bit better with the sidebar
Download the gadget here.
Setting up the multiple calendar support is fairly straight-forward, just go to the gadget’s settings form, enter your credentials, and click the ‘retrieve’ link. The list below that link will now show the calendars associated with your account, and you can select the ones you would like to show up in the gadget.
For historical reasons, I should provide a link to the original version.
Let me know what you think!
November 19th, 2008 at 15:48:13
[...] Paper submitted to BNAIC 2008 The Calendar v2.0 released! [...]
November 19th, 2008 at 17:41:53
thx dude!!!
I’ll check it as soon as I get home
November 19th, 2008 at 21:17:49
Sorry dat dit Nederlands is, maar is ook enkel bedoeld aan eelke
getest en probleem ondervonden.
bij selecteren van meerdere kalenders blijft hij hangen op Loading…
De enige oplossing die ik gevonden heb
- 1 kalender selecteren
- laten laden
- 2de bijvoegen
- laten laden…
Misschien kan dit verholpen worden om ze standaard niet samen te laden, maar om op elke volgende een kleine timeout te steken..?
November 19th, 2008 at 22:08:12
The “retrieve” isn’t working for me?
When I hit it, it does nothing at all.
And when I try to skip that step and just hit okay, it doesn’t do anything either, the setting screen just sits there.
November 19th, 2008 at 22:15:27
Okay. I got it to load the calendar list by opening up Google Calendar in my IE browser. I selected the calendars I wanted and hit the okay button, but now it seems to be stuck on “loading…”
November 20th, 2008 at 00:03:23
Hmm, sorry about this bug. Tomorrow I’ll see what I can do to resolve it. I tested the new version with some bogus calendars I created just for the sake of testing; so these only had like one or two events in them. It could be that for multiple “real” calendars (i.e., with lots of events) the loading time is too high or something. But anyway, I’ll look into it.
In the meantime, for Twist: jerre commented, in Dutch, that the only way he could get the calendar to load was to first select one calendar, then let the gadget load, then add a second one, let it load again, etc. Could you tell me if this works for you, as well?
November 20th, 2008 at 02:29:26
3:30pm - Entered sign in info and clicked Retrieve
3:32pm - Tried signing into Google with Firefox and IE
3:34pm - Still no list of calendars
3:35pm - Click Retrieve again.
3:40pm - List of calendars Retrieved and I select one calendar on the list. I fill out the update interval, etc. When I click “okay”, nothing happens.
3:50pm - Uninstalled Gadget and reinstalled it
3:52pm - Entered Sign in info and clicked retrieve
4:07pm - List of calendars shows up. I pick one calendar on the list, fill out lower info and hit “ok”. Nothing happens.
4:27pm - Still can’t get past the “OK” button. Tried selecting each of the four calendars without success, and tried selecting more than one at a time with the same result.
November 20th, 2008 at 07:13:26
I finally managed to get past the okay button. I’d chosen only one calendar from the list, but I’ve still been hanging on “loading” for almost two hours now.
November 21st, 2008 at 16:36:25
@All: As you can see above, I have changed the version available from this page to 2.1. The only change is that some debugging info can now be seen if you turn this feature on in Settings. Could you please let me know what messages you see when you enable debugging? Unfortunately, I still have not been able to reproduce the bugs you are experiencing.
Thanks to all for your cooperation!
November 22nd, 2008 at 17:49:20
I now selected 2 calendars and every thing seems to work properly
November 24th, 2008 at 07:48:25
[...] The other option is to use a different Authentication mechanism called “The ClientLogin Interface” . This option was left out because I did not know if I could do (Cross site scripting) XSS in gadgets. Given the half baked sidebar, it might be possible to do it but I did not check it. The gadget can perform XSS queries. Found out from the source of the gadget available here. [...]
November 24th, 2008 at 21:01:41
Many thanks for developping this great gadget.
At the moment I am experiencing similar problems as already described above. “Loading” seems to hang when the colors option is enabled. - But I haven’t verified that yet…
But please check sorting of reoccuring events (e. g. birthdays, holidays, etc.). At the moment the first entries are 5 birthdays ranging from January to April followed by an event on November.
Keep up the good work.
Scharkieh
November 25th, 2008 at 19:00:30
@ Scharkieh
I don’t think the gadget is really useful for you.
It seems like you have nothing to do ;-)
on topic: gadget still works whithout hanging sinds 22 nov
November 25th, 2008 at 20:37:03
@jerre: Could you explain please?
November 27th, 2008 at 09:59:40
great gadget. i just wish it worked.
i have zero functionality past opening the config page
will check this space for a fix!
until then i will use another gadget for my calender.
keep up the good work Eelke!
November 27th, 2008 at 10:18:59
@ iMpulSe: Have you enabled the “Print debug info” option in the Settings panel? If you check the box and click ‘OK’ the first thing the gadget will do (before trying to store any other settings) is enable debugging info, so if you then adjust settings and click ‘OK’ again you will probably get some more information regarding why it’s not working. If you would share this information, I’d really appreciate it :)
@ rest: I am going to fix the sorting of all-day events in the very near future, maybe today or, otherwise, sometime this weekend.
November 27th, 2008 at 10:54:22
The problem with the sorting of all-day events should be fixed now. I have not incremented the version number (or updated this post’s main text), but the v2.1 now available should sort all events properly. You’re welcome to download again :)
November 27th, 2008 at 14:04:38
Okay, sorry about the delay in getting back in here. I downloaded the new 2.1 version.
It took 5 minutes for the calendars to pull up after hitting retrieve a number of times. When the list of my calendars finally came up, I selected one off the list, set the rest of the settings including the print debugging and hit okay.
The menu window went away as it should and in the gadget it says “making request for cal i=2.
It’s been hanging there 3 hours.
I go back into the settings to retry. Above the e-mail address it says “readInCalendarsString returning”.
I go through the process again… same results.
November 29th, 2008 at 02:30:37
I figured out what the issue was and it has nothing to do with your gadget so much as my firewall software.
Instead of just a general approval through my firewall of the Windows Sidebar, I needed to locate where the gadget was stored in windows (C:\User\Username\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar\Gadgets) and from there approve this particular gadget manually in order for it to work properly.
December 1st, 2008 at 10:50:06
@Twist: OK, thanks for letting me know.
December 2nd, 2008 at 05:54:39
its a very good tool…actually i was searching for it n u only have done it..but the thing is that after having downloaded the 2.1 version, it seems like i can see only one calender, or some problem with the sorting (datewise)..actually i have selected 3 calenders in the “calenders to include” box…do u know why it is n can u fix it if its a problem? all over the utility ios grttt..but without more calenders its of no use! again thank u very much for the job done..a grt job done!!!
December 2nd, 2008 at 05:56:21
now it seems ok..i selected step by step..earlier i selected 3 of them together using ctrl click…get job u have done..a grt utility..thanks a million
December 4th, 2008 at 21:01:24
Congratulations! Your calendar v2 is the best gadget available for Vista. I have only one comment to make. When I use the 12 hour format the date and times of an event do not fit in the display at least in my computer. Perhaps if you use “a” for “am” and “p” for “pm” you may be able to fit it in.
December 6th, 2008 at 15:27:55
Thanks for sharing your work :)
December 7th, 2008 at 07:30:39
Great gadget, works ok for me. Thanks!
December 7th, 2008 at 09:35:17
This is wonderful!! I was searching for a gadget to use for my windows calendar and could not find one. I saw some for the google calendar so I transfered all my calendars to google and this program works like a charm! (I can’t say anything close to that for the 2 other ones I attempted before I found yours.)
If you ever decide to create a gadget for use with the vista windows calendar I would love to know, as I would prefer to use that calendar (not web-based).
Thanks for all you hard work!!
December 8th, 2008 at 00:49:56
Hi, just an update. After starting my PC from hibernation the calendar comes up blank. If I go in to the settings then click OK then the entries are refreshed.
Regards
December 8th, 2008 at 10:20:20
@ Alan Heywood: the blank calendar is probably due to your network connection not having been re-established after leaving hibernation; this prevents the gadget from downloading events. It should, however, keep trying to do a periodic refresh, so after one or two update intervals (as specified in Settings), the events should come up again. Is this the case? Or does it stay blank all the time? By the way, clicking ‘OK’ in Settings always forces a refresh, so that’s why your solution works :)
December 8th, 2008 at 21:16:47
I am having the same problem as some of the others. It is taking forever to load up (I still can’t get it to load.. It is at the “initialize and Authenticate stage and it is still there after 10 minutes.) I have checked the firewall settings and permission is granted for this gadget. Any other suggestions
Thanks
December 9th, 2008 at 12:24:28
@Gordon: well, the others are not having this problem anymore, judging from the comments. Your problem certainly sounds like a connection problem. Are your credentials entered correctly in the settings form? And when you click the ‘retrieve’ link to get the list of calendars, do the calendars show up?
December 9th, 2008 at 14:50:27
This gadget works great…only thing is that the font size is really small. Any way to adjust the text size?
December 21st, 2008 at 19:25:51
Hello…great gadget.
I can confirm, however, that it fails to load (hangs on ‘Loading…’) when the ‘Use Calendar Colors’ option is selected. When this option is NOT selected it works fine.
A minor issue, but I would certainly like to take advantage of the color coding.
December 29th, 2008 at 18:40:49
Hi.
It give me runtime errors when installing:
Line: 58
Error: String expected
Line: 74
Error: ‘calendarEntries.length’ is null or not an object
The installation seems to continue when I click no on debugging but the application doesn’t work. When I punch in my credentials in the application and click OK nothing happens.
Any ideas?
December 31st, 2008 at 01:15:38
A strange thing is happening. The calendar displays all the events for January, then skips all events in February and displays a single event with the correct day but in March instead of February. I checked with the Google calendar and the events are posted correctly there.
January 3rd, 2009 at 15:27:15
If an event has the same starting and ending time maybe you should display only the starting time. It looks funny to have both times displayed when they are the same. Otherwise it is a great gadget.
January 6th, 2009 at 18:59:55
So This gadget sounds great however I am not able to get it to initialize. I have disabled my VPN, connected to a public internet connection (No port blocking) and I am still not able to get this to connect. i get the followinf messages on the gadget when I try to retrieve:
1.initializeAndAuthenticate ( it just hangs here)
2. Cancelling, settings not OK (when I click OK I get this. I can not Retrieve my calendar list)
January 8th, 2009 at 20:07:42
My company uses google to handle its corporate email account and we use the calendar functionality as well. Unfortunately your gadget doesn’t allow me to use a non gmail email address even though it’s still hosted by google. Can you remove this restriction and simply attempt to use whatever credentials the user supplies?
January 19th, 2009 at 16:33:03
@Tom: there is no such restriction, the only check that is made on the email address is that it is a valid one (i.e., has an @ sign, a period, etc.). It could be that Google enforces such a restriction, but then, of course, I cannot do anything about it :)
January 19th, 2009 at 17:47:40
Hmm ok thanks. It will work with my personal gmail calendar but not with my corporate account. What about being able to specify a url pointing to the .ics file on google.com, which is how the Lightning addon works in Thunderbird to support calendars.
January 21st, 2009 at 23:41:59
Hi,
I am using your google calendar gadget and I love it! Thanks for writting it! The only thing that I think would make it better is if the pop up notices from google would pop up even if I didn’t have my google calendar page open. I don’t even know if that is a possibility but I would appreciate it. Great Job!
January 22nd, 2009 at 19:53:49
Great Gadget!
Bug: I’m having a problem with removing events when multiple calendars are used. That is, when I have 2 calendars in the gadget, then remove an event from one (or both), the event isn’t removed from the gadget.
January 29th, 2009 at 03:55:27
Awesome! I used the first version a few months ago, but i didn’t like that only because it didn’t support multiple calendars. This new one does exactly what I need it to do, and is by far the best gadget of its type!
A few notes about it though: I’ve noticed that certain times, some calendars don’t load properly, and it gives an error and nothing shows up. It only happened with a few of them, and only on random occasions, so I don’t know why it could be happening. Other than that, absolutely no complaints!
January 29th, 2009 at 23:56:33
I just brought up my computer repeatedly and every time the calendar skips all events in February and displays events starting with March. What am I doing wrong?
January 30th, 2009 at 00:15:27
Now the calendar shows an event on March 23 but the event is actually on February 23. I checked the Google calendar and the date of the event is indeed February 23. Any help?
January 30th, 2009 at 07:24:42
Ah, i got it. Okay, so I get this error:
“A Runtime Error has occurred.
Do you wish to Debug?
Line: 93
Error: ‘length’ is null or not an object”
This only happens when one of the calendars that I’ve included has no future events. I’m assuming the only thing that has to be done to fix this problem is to check to see whether each calendar actually exists or has any events before trying to retrieve the first event from it.
This is probably not a problem for most people, but I have several calendars that don’t always have stuff going on with them, so those are often empty for a while before i have more events in them. Anyway, yeah, once that’s fixed I do believe that it would be perfect for me.
January 30th, 2009 at 15:07:37
Many thanks for your work again!
Please check if gadget works correctly when default/first calendar has no entries. I’m not sure but I observed that coloring (”use calendar colors”) and loading works properly when all calendars have entries in the displayed time span.
February 2nd, 2009 at 14:13:49
Hi,
I had “loading…”issue. I tried as somebody suggested to disable color option. But I couldnt find any checkbox with this option. So I used wireshark and cought right the moment, when gadgets is trying to login and establish connection. Result of investigation is enabling port 443(HTTPS/SSL) in firewall and sidebar app. Its working for me…good hunt.
February 9th, 2009 at 21:58:51
I get the hang-on-Loading issue as well when I select to show colors. I hope there is an update soon! Is there any debug info we can submit to help you find that bug?
Best,
Philipp
February 19th, 2009 at 18:06:39
Just wanna say txs so much for all this nice piece of work. Have been looking for ages something like this. Waiting for further updates!!!
February 25th, 2009 at 15:27:51
thanks, this works great!
March 8th, 2009 at 18:06:53
It does not retrieve the calender for me… :|
March 10th, 2009 at 03:31:50
Thank you, it works great.
Only thing I dislike is the 24-hour clocks.
HATE THAT!
is there a way to change it?
cause now i have to really think to bring it back to my 12 hour time that i know.
ahhh
thanks
March 10th, 2009 at 11:56:49
@Sophie: you can change the 12h/24h preference in the gadget’s settings dialog. This is a v2 only feature, though :)
March 11th, 2009 at 22:14:17
What does “Status: 500″ mean? I seem to be getting that a lot lately.
March 20th, 2009 at 01:03:41
So I’ve been using this gadget for a while now, and its absolutely the best one out of the many that i’ve looked at. However, one problem that I’m having is just that the schedule doesn’t update itself. The only times that it will update is when I initially turn my computer on, and if I open the settings dialog and then click “OK.” That way always works to update it, however, until I do that, the past events just remain there. I’ve tried changing the update interval from 10 mins to 60 mins, with no effect at all.
March 20th, 2009 at 01:04:29
So I’ve been using this gadget for a while now, and its absolutely the best one out of the many that i’ve looked at. However, one problem that I’m having is just that the schedule doesn’t update itself. The only times that it will update is when I initially turn my computer on, and if I open the settings dialog and then click “OK.” That way always works to update it, however, until I do that, the past events just remain there. I’ve tried changing the update interval from 10 mins to 60 mins, with no effect at all. Nevertheless, this minor annoyance isn’t enough to make me get rid of this app at all.
March 21st, 2009 at 14:49:09
I would like to use the GoogleCalendar-gadget voor Vista, but I can’t be sure it’s safe. Of course I know it’s necessary to enter my credentials in order to log-in to my personal agenda, but how do I know my credentials are not sent to some criminal?
March 26th, 2009 at 10:17:02
Hello,
this tool is a very nice tool. But I have a little problem. The tool doesn´t work with an google apps account. I´ve got my own domain in google, but I can´t use it.
Thanks
Martin
March 29th, 2009 at 22:39:19
Hi there,
expected the gadget to be nice, but it doesn’t work for me..
I enter the e-mail and password, retrieve calendar list, select the calendars to display, select other settings, press ok only to get this debug info:
“canceling, settings not OK”.
I have tried different variations of setting and selected different calendars - no change.. Any ideas why this could be so?
Thanks!
April 2nd, 2009 at 01:40:13
Mine was hanging when I hit “ok”, too. But after I changed my username to include the “@gmail.com”, the “ok” button worked. But then it was stuck on “loading”. So then I clicked on the settings wrench icon and hit “ok” again, and it worked.
So some bugs clearly need to be fixed. But I have an enhancement request. I’d like to see the actual calendar, and then see or switch to the agenda view by hovering or clicking. I wanted for this to replace my default calendar gadget, but for now I’ll use both.
I wonder if we get little messages when a gadget version updates. I’m new to Vista and *trying hard* to like it.
Greg
April 10th, 2009 at 10:53:10
hi This is really great. I love it.
April 14th, 2009 at 02:28:04
I experienced some problems getting this gadget to work and was finally able to trace down the source: My Google password contained special characters like “%”, german Umlauts and ” ” (space), which mess up URL parameters.
To fix this problem, line 17 of ConnectionUtils.js should read:
+ “&Passwd=” + escape(password)
JavaScript then replaces the problematic characters in the password with their ‘escaped’ equivalent.
Could you include this fix in the next release?
May 28th, 2009 at 19:47:07
hey dude nice work !. what i was wondering is, if its possible to scroll throw the calendar ? cause it show couple of things that will happen tomorrow but can you make a function to scroll back to yesterday or to day after tomorrow. thnx !
June 4th, 2009 at 11:47:14
Hi Eelke,
Love your app! I only encounter two problems:
1. When I startup my system, the gadget says “loading” and leaves it at that. Opening settings and pressing “save” does not work, neither does changing calendars. Only if I change the color setting, things will load.
2. Scheduled refresh does not work. It just doesn’t start.
I hope you can fix those bugs.
Thanks for all the good work you did.
Grtz, Marjolijn
June 18th, 2009 at 01:22:11
Dank u well! Thanks I was soooo looking for that gadget :)
June 23rd, 2009 at 17:53:01
Hi,
Great gadget! the best for google calendar i’ve seen…
It would be even greater if you could make it work with Tasks :)
Thanks!
July 8th, 2009 at 00:31:53
it works fine without the colour option clicked…
thanks
September 5th, 2009 at 01:30:12
The best!
Thanks man!
September 7th, 2009 at 15:47:17
I want this to work more than you could know…
Your gadget looks like it does all I would love to see with the Google calendar (Google apps for domains).
In settings the calendars are retrieved when I put in my credentials but then clicking ok does nothing(debug shows: “cancelling, settings not ok”
Any thoughts dude?
September 7th, 2009 at 17:13:32
Hi,
Like the App. Would love to see calendar color codes as background. Adjustable text size of subject would be nice to. And number of appointments is missing big time.
Greetings,
Vincent
September 7th, 2009 at 20:16:03
Hello,
I’ve used the calendar with much pleasure for some time until I decided to change my password last week. After that it has not worked anymore (I ofcourse entered my new password in the gadget, was able to retrieve my calendars and that all seemed normal). I’ve tried changing the password back but the result stays the same: Loading…….
If I turn on the debug info it says: parsingfeed i=1
I have no idea what to do, does anybody have an idea. I already start to miss using it………………
September 10th, 2009 at 11:12:22
Hello,
I get when I start the settings.html a java error ’system’ undefined
on line 8 and line 64 …
And i’m not able to get a list … it is loading, and I keep having the
initializeAndAuthenticate message from connectionutil.js and the next step seems not to work
xmlHttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
Anyone know what to do ??
Thanks!!!
Edwin
September 14th, 2009 at 11:21:41
It would be nice if this would work with google apps calendar, using my own domain. Surely this is a small change to the login name handling.
Cheers,
Luke
September 20th, 2009 at 18:53:22
Would be wonderful if I could drop an .ics file on it for inclusion in the calendar.
Cheers.
October 5th, 2009 at 02:31:50
Fantastic gadget, excellent job! Thank you!
October 21st, 2009 at 23:27:26
It keeps saying ‘Pleas enter Credentials’ here :/ .. :( .
I’m using windows 7 32 Bit .
October 31st, 2009 at 21:59:24
I can”t login, when i fill in my credential and press ” ok” the program does nothing.
Iam using windows 7 64Bit ultimate.
November 18th, 2009 at 19:14:21
Thank you so much works perfectly with Vista. Hope it works well with W7.
December 4th, 2009 at 11:57:48
Useful soft! thanks!
December 15th, 2009 at 16:56:06
[...] Verwandten integriert hat. So hat man seine Termine immer im Blick. Das Google-Calendar Gadget kann hier direkt vom Entwickler bezogen [...]
January 4th, 2010 at 01:18:55
Works great…. Any thoughts on building this to use port 443 (https://) rather than port 80 (http://) there are several place I know of that block apps like this simply because of port 80 but have no issue with 443 traffic.
January 4th, 2010 at 22:47:02
Thank you for the gadget! Works great.
I would love to have a slightly transparent background for the gadget - perhaps you can manage to let the user decide the background? Also it would be very nice, if one can change the date/time format to whatever one like. For example:
15.05.09 | 14:00 - 15:00
I think that is easier to read
Whatever, great work!
January 14th, 2010 at 08:35:20
Hi Eelke,
Thanks so much for this agenda list. I like it better than the reminder list in iCalendar Plus as it is more condensed. I’ve only had it setup for 15 minutes now, but it doesn’t seem to be retrieving all my appointments for the selected calendars and its also displaying events that are 9 months off but not some that are much closer.
Could a feature be added to limit the display of upcoming events to next 7 days, next 14 days, 1 month?
Fred
Salt Lake City
February 4th, 2010 at 19:19:56
I just found this gadget and its great! Thanks Eelke! Works on both Windows Vista and Windows 7. One TIP that may be helpful: when setting up credentials: after the “Calendars to include (retrieve)” box has been populated, user must select one or more calendars which are listed. [Initially I didn't realize the calendars needed to be selected.]
March 14th, 2010 at 06:25:19
Any chance you will create a version that has customizable colors? the rest of my widgets are of a dark theme so it really sticks out.
March 18th, 2010 at 20:09:29
Great app! Thanks for doing this. Some suggestions:
- Adjustable font size: I use a large monitor and from a distance, the font is tiny, even compared to my other gadgets.
- Making the app extendable (sideways or lengthwise) would also be great to accommodate bigger font or more events.
- Background colors, semi-transparent background
- If the app could “alert” for events (like Google calendar does) that would be great
May 1st, 2010 at 10:33:46
just thank you a lot!!