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Looking for a Stand-Alone Calendar App?
Chadduss asks: "I don't know about all of you but I've been looking for a good calendar application for quite sometime. I have used the Mozilla calendar extension for Thunderbird but I had problems with it several times. Enter Mozilla Sunbird. That's right, another bird! It's still only version 0.1.1 but I for one hope to see it come out on top."
I was long awaiting the unveiling of another 'bird' app to complete the collection, but then Mozilla threw consistency to the winds with the renaming of Firebird... now I don't know what to think :(
:(
On the upside, Sunbird looks like a pretty nice app, but it comes with so much baggage (basically a whole NSPR/Gecko runtime). 11 megs for a calendar app? If Mozilla is going to continue spinning off parts of their suite as individual apps, they should at least consider taking the otherwise redundant parts and keeping them in one shared directory. Of course, with hard drive space and memory being available for so cheap these days, who cares except for the pycklers like myself
I, for one, would very much like a standards compliant stand-alone calendar app. Being able to run my own online calendar is very nice as well, since I have between several computers throughout the day.
Right now it requires SOME moz product (thunderbird, firefox, or mozilla suite) to be installed to work. Bit of a crutch, but something that over time will disappear. Can't wait!
Disclaimer: I don't work for, nor am I associated with Rainlendar. For the record, I use iCal with my YzDock (OH NO APPLE'S GONNA SUE ME) dock.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
The dream is to make my own Outlook replacement out of open software building blocks, and a calendar block is much needed. But so far the other blocks only work well with their own kind. It's not Open unless all the building blocks are interoperable and interchangeable. Until then, Outlook/Office wins.
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
Any old farts like me who are still using dialup care. :-)
Mozilla, do it for the old farts!
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
What were you asking slashdot?
First Firebird, then Sunbird. Hmmm...did someone on the Mozilla core team work for GM, in particular Pontiac?
All kidding aside, I think this is a good thing because I think there are a lot of people out there using Outlook just as a calendar, which is complete overkill. Likewise, Thunderbird is a good thing because once again people are using Outlook only for email and that's overkill.
simply put, sunbird will run on windows, linux, and os x. it will run decently on all 3 platforms (thanks to XUL and the new os x pinstripe theme used in firefox and thunerbird).
people won't have the excuse of "i can't run that" or "it costs money", etc. it's quite a nice thing, actually. and the bigger plus yet is i don't have to ask people to download the entire mozilla suite + a plugin.
- tristan
Excellent suggestion! I downloaded both Rainlendar and Sunbird, and decided to quickly run through both. Without listing reasons or any of that garbage that no one cares for, Rainlendar wins on a matter of efficieny and ease of use. Sunbird isn't complicated, but can it merge with one's desktop as with Rainlendar? No? Bah. Again, excellent suggestion, Txiasaeia.
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"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
Not even sure sync-ability should be a word, but nevermind.. ..but my point is that a desktop calendar is only valuable if it can be used with portable devices. In particular, there needs to be a version available for pocket Linux, PalmOS or PocketPC before it's going to be used by anyone looking for a serious calender application.
I think that the mozilla developers should combine these two apps. People are looking for an outlook replacement, and both of these apps would provide this if developed together...
Also, how about applying the firefox design methodology to the overall Mozilla Suite. Make sure that the overall Suite is relatively light and graphically impressive, but keep all of the components together. I use them all anyway...
Still another idea, package Firefox, Thunderbird, nvu, and sunbird together in an online installer which downloads any of the components you select.
I'm sure some of this has been already mentioned, but hey, who wants to check Google?
In linux libertas
Well the author did say a stand alone calendar app. So why not get a PDA?
Or I guess he could write his own. There's certainly enough tech out there.
"evolution" and "kdepim" are outlook-like applications. while evolution tries to handle mail too, kdepim leaves this stuff to kmail.
I was expecting someone to comment about these tools.
Do you realise you said 'Ack! Bloat!' and then listed transparency and skins as features of Rainlendar? Transparency & skins == major bloat (yes, even if it is sub 1Mb).
Will you be able to "sync" it if you have several different computers?
Didnt see anytinh about it on the site.
You come out and say that it's less than 1 megabyte, and still you suggest that it's bloated?
Contradictory?
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"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
Sorry, gut reaction against a 11MB calendar app (Sunbird).
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
I use iCal (with iSync to my iPod, PDA and Mobile) happily.
A
Actually, I browse the web, I use email and I need a calendar application. The Mozilla suite really fits my needs well, expecially because there are windows and linux versions which behave pretty much in the same way.
I'd rather see more time spent on improving the applications, rather than trying to figure out how to make them independent.
Just my 2c.
Outlook does a lot of things well - Contacts, Mail, Calendar, ToDo, Notes - and it integrates well with the desktop. It's a bit of a killer app for MS Office because it puts together most people's PIM needs in one place. The Mozilla approach of Browser + Mail might work for some but it makes no sense at all to me. I want an Outlook replacement, one which uses open file formats and isn't bloated. One that runs nice and quickly. It seems like a lot of people do. Thunderbird developers, please take note.
I am going to keep it real just go with the Unix cal and calendar commands. Real nice and lightweight.
Anyone else here use Rainlendar? :)
I find its a VERY nice piece of software, even if it doesn't have all the fancy contacts/synching/whatever features of other calendars. Nope, its pretty much just stick notes on the days, and glance at your ToDo list. Nothing professional, but for me it works really well.
No, its not perfect... but hey, it IS open source, so you could mod it yourself if you wanted!
I'd reccomend it to anyone whos at that awkward stage between "No calendar" and "Bloated calendar". Heck, maybe even if you're already using a bloated calendar and just want something simple. Give it a whirl, it cant hurt.
No offense to the guys doing wonderful work on the Mozilla project, but there are already lots of calendar apps out there.
What people ask for in the corporate world is a full Outlook replacement. This does not exist in the F/OSS world.
Yes, I know about Ximian Connector, but that's not free or Open Source, and when you start telling customers "well, everything is free unless you want to use all of Outlook's functionality, then you have to pay..." they look at you like you're trying to con them.
Same goes with Codeweaver's Crossover Office.
It's worse when you're trying to sell Sun's Java Desktop System (which is actually quite nice, BTW) and you tell them "yeah, you have to pay for this, then you have to pay for that..." and they start asking "how much else do I have to buy to replace Windows? This is starting to sound like it's not worth it."
In the world of people fed up with MS, and having to drasticaly cut their budget, in fear for their jobs if they make a minor mistake, telling them they have to pay $60/head for people just to get Outlook funtionality doesn't go over very well.
If they dropped the price to around $10-$25... it would probably fly of the proverbial shelves.
Heck, JDS (the whole O/S) is only $50-$100/head and that's with a full year support!
Oh, and ditto to the Exchange replacements... people ARE asking for it.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
cal(1)
I really liked the Calendar component on Mozilla before, but there's one thing that keeps me far far away from it and it's ilk: the TODO app. As of yet there are very few full-featured todo applications that will allow you to sort by category, view by category, list with date, category, and summary, add notes, and sync with the Palm. Evolution is the closest I've come thus far, and even it has trouble with category support for the Palm (I've managed to work around it, however). Until that point, these calendaring applications are nothing but mere toys.
Just as Mozilla is the odds on replacemnt for Internet Explorer, and generally is embraced by any IE user who tries it, it would be wonderful to have a replacemnt for the godawful Palm software.
I for one would love to have a calendar/contact list that had all of the features that Palm Desktop lacks. If Sunbird could sync with Palms, and even better, between my laptop and desktop, it could build a nice sized user group.
Three Squirrels
If Google provides a calendar, it will be indexed, searchable and you will get ads of comely women ready to meet you online (or real life) next to your meeting appointment.
If M$ provides a calendar, there are flash and other rotating ads surrounding your calendar, you can add only entries for only the next 20 days but you can upgrade for better (and slower) version for only $19.99 per month.
However, if there's an open source calendar, you get a webpage saying there's a calendar version 0.0.0.xx, no documentation, requires in-depth knowledge about your OS and several other scripts for it to even compile, does not actually work but ahh! keeps the nerd community happy!
http://efil.blogspot.com/
No contradiction. 1 Mb = thunderthighs.
I'd rather save 500k and skip the skins.
In addition to a calendar, a contact manager that can interface with both the calendar and the email app is desperatly needed on Windows. I'm trying to convice people in the office to move away from MS and the big pitfall is a PIM to replace Outlook. Who is working on something like this? Anyone?
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I use Evolution for my email and find its built-in calendaring adequate.
However, before I started using Evo, I used Thomas Dreimeyer's plan.
Plan has seen years of work on it, has lots of nice features, configurable birthdays, etc.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Are you on crack?
How are you going to "integrate" a terminal email client with a GUI calendar app?
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Freshmeat turns up plenty of possibilities, including some standalone apps and some lightweight ones. Self-promotion: I wrote a really tiny, simple one called When.
Find free books.
Just use the Firefox, Thunderbird or Suite extensions (contrary to what the submitter thinks, they are the same beast as Sunbird). Less than 1 Mb I believe.
Never used it myself (my whiteboard serve me well enough), but KOrganizer look good and is reputedly very well integrated with other KDE apps (Kmail, etc).
:wq
Im eagerly watching the development of Chandler, which will be a step further in the concept of PIM. It's modelled after Lotus Agenda, whose designer works in this new project. The promised benefits of its first version are these:
1. Strong information management capabilities. Internally, OSAF refers to this as the "soul of Lotus Agenda". We will provide an extensible framework for users to categorize, organize and retrieve all types of useful information such as URLs, attachments, notes, RSS feeds, etc. in addition to basic PIM data types such as messages, events, contacts and tasks. This generic information type (or Information Item as we call it) will have many built-in and extensible behaviors. For example, any Information Item can have arbitrary ad-hoc attributes added to it. Users can also relate information items to each other in user-defined schemas.
2. Flexible and Extensible Presentation and Interaction Framework. This is a framework to allow the creation of task-centric documents personalized to a user's work habits. It includes a UI widget that is capable of querying for the relevant set of information items and displaying the related attributes and relationships of this set of items so as to provide the right context for the current task at hand. For example, the user can view a project view that displays all the messages (threaded topically), events, tasks and documents related to a certain project.
3. Power email features. These are features to help the user process and organize messages faster while shielding the user from unwanted or irrelevant information (e.g. spam). For example, we will add capabilities to have one-click disposition of email messages under a variety of circumstances. This is not a kitchen-sink approach. We will not add all possible email features or even all features common to popular existing email clients (e.g. support for return receipts and possibly even signature templates for emails). We will focus on features dealing with high-volume email.
4. Continue refinement of basic calendar and contacts functionality, focusing on how calendar and contacts inter-relate with each other and with other information items. This will further drive and validate our information management features
5. Provide sharing and collaboration features around information items (this needs to be further designed and elaborated)
6. Robustness and reasonable performance. Canoga will be our first release that should be safe for real data. We will have assurances about data integrity and recoverability. We will also ensure that future versions of Chandler will seamlessly accept Canoga repository data. We also need to ensure reasonable performance since we are targeting info-centric users who will process and store much more information than the regular user. Our goal is allow users to store and interact with a few million Information Items.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
D-BUS could make this possible.
My employer produces a standalone calendar app called eventSherpa that is free (as in beer) to use if you just want to keep your own schedule. (We also have a publishing service which we charge for). It's worth a look if you're a Windows user.
Good choices are available.
Evolution
Kontact
Kontact Features
Actually, I've only used iCal a couple of times. At my last job we used Corporate Time, then owned by Steltor (I think) and now owned by Oracle. The Mac versions I tried for well over a years were horrible pieces of shit. Everytime I'd modify a meeting all the attendees and resources would be removed. Fortunately the office secretary was really nice and added meetings for me (even better because she controlled the conference room resource). The program got much better in the end. I was even putting personal things in it. I miss it now. Any recommendations on a good web-based calendar would be gladly accepted.
"What were you asking slashdot?"
Do I have to seperate my colors from my whites when doing laundry?
Is there anything to store and share calendaring info?
ala LDAP, or IMAP,
Well... what about a todo list server based?
Pretty simple... iCal.
Thank you, Apple.
Spoon not. Fork, or fork not. There is no spoon.
Your in luck. I've been looking for something similiar and I bothered to search the web.
A grumpy editor's calendar search
Enterprise Solutions Overview
Open Source Overview
Linux Links
Freshmeat is always worth a look too. The biggest problem I found was too much choice.
So far I've tried Chronos but I found that not all it's CPAN dependancies were resolvable for me. I've also tried MyCalendar.
It's nice and simple, accessible via the web, but unfortunately it's webpages are too big to fit in my cellphone's memory. My ideal solution would serve up some tight WML when necessary and possibly be accessible via Outlook for my secretary.
So, I haven't found my ideal solution yet.
If anyone has any opinion on the other web calendaring solutions, please share...
TimeCalendar seems pretty good as a stand-alone. Last I checked it hadn't implemented the iCalendar standard like Calzilla or iCal, but I emailed the chap and he said that it was in the works. I need that, so am holding off buying the full version until then. Otherwise it seems like a pretty good thing. The free version is limited to two 'categories' such as work or home that can be switched on & off relatively easily.
Yeah, on a 486...
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"All hail the glory of the Hypnotoad."
Whew, I'm glad you saved me those steps. I'll stick with Sunbird, thanks.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'
At my last job, I used Evolution with MS Exchange connector to survive without having Windows on my desktop.
At my current job, I've been lucky enough to get a beta copy of Hydrogen, Sun's iPlanet Calendar Connector, and it works reasonably well, though not a fully integrated as I'd like.
Now, GLOW, OpenOffice Groupware's calendar is a standalone app, but also works with WCAP servers. It's new & buggy, but does both local calendaring and server-based, if you have a WCAP backend. It's certainly promising, and if integrated with OpenOffice would be quite nice.
Or you could try this one.
He he, yea it's a demo (among many)
. But it is a very nice calender app which is possible for the poster to make themselves.
Yes. I wrote the original comment. As I said, even though it's 1mb, skins and transparency and whatnot is and always will be bloat.
Although in the case of transparency, that's probably not many lines of code at all. That'd be handled by NT5. So no wuccas there.
But skins - yup. And I tried it out. The skin support is a bit iffy. It doesn't scale well, kinda fixed. And the todo list just grows and grows. And it kinda flashes a bit, and the option to lock it to the desktop (marked experimental) is indeed a bit buggy (disappeared once).
So yep - another argument against bloat - should've worked on getting the good stuff going properly rather than doing skins and transparency etc. But whatever!
On the Thunderbird help forum, some dude was wondering why Firefox and Thunderbird weren't intergrated, instead of having a nice intergrated package.
4 63 2&highlight=
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=6
If you don't mind substituting one Evil Empire for another (complete with megalomaniacal CEO's), check out Oracle's proposed replacement for Exchange, called Oracle Collaboration Suite. It's centralized in the database, like Exchange will eventually be, so instead of removing virii from dozens of Exchange Servers world wide, you only clean one database. It supports Outlook client, mobile clients, and web-based as well.
Groupwise has been running on Linux for a while. Groupwise 6.5 Beta now out...it's pretty sweet:
http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/