Events clarification please - Smart-Thinker Events

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Forums DotNetNuke Smart-Thinker E... Events clarification please

11/24/2006 9:06 AM

	Buck Anderson
45 posts
www.justnorth.com

Events clarification please (N/A)

Hi Rod,

Events upgrade:

iCal - huh? I see it failing and also failing on pokerDIY. I don't see info in the config directions. Can you give more detail please? I am assuming that the user must download it from Apple. How about an option to not show it? How about an option to add to outlook (similar to the DNN events mod)?

FYI - It is coming along nicely. Now let's discuss using Ventrian type token templates for the Events detail page. I would really enjoy having more control on the detail layout.

Good job buddy!

Buck Anderson JustNorth Outdoors www.justnorth.com

11/25/2006 7:25 AM

	Rodney Joyce
3064 posts
www.DNNDir.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

Hi Buck,

Yes, a templated layout with tokens is high priority for the Event Detail page so that you can customize each EV at module level. But the cycle has turned so it's the Referrals (dogfooding on PokerDIY.com at the moment - releasing in next few days), Quotes and UserProfile versions first (and then possible Events before HomePage as I want to get recurring Events and multiple category selection in).

iCal - when you say it is "failing" - can you be more specific please? It works fine for me - I am using IE 7 and FF 2.0 - what browser are you using? Do you have outlook installed? If you go to a Google Calendar and export to iCal format does that work? Can you try any other iCal export program and see if you can get a .ics file?

Basically I read up on .vcs and .ics (iCalendar) and although .vcs is currently more widely supported, Google Calendar and a lot of others imply that iCal is the preferred format. All the big event sites (Google, 30 Boxes, Upcoming.org) support iCal. The reason why I did not call it "export to Outlook" is that it can do far more than that and can be read by any .ics compatable system (including Outlook). The green Ical icon is the one Google Calendar uses.

Here are some of the references I used:
            http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ICalendar
            http://www.madskristensen.dk/blog/CommentView,guid,4abf10fa-3e18-467c-8636-2e411ad22b7f.aspx
            http://www.nexthaus.com/Help/Outlook/Frames/hs2164.htm
            http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/chow20021007.php3?print_mode=1

I'm sure you know you can change the visibility of the img to "false" in the .ascx which would do the same as a setting.

Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players

Smart-Thinker DotNetNuke Development Blog

11/25/2006 7:38 AM

	Rodney Joyce
3064 posts
www.DNNDir.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

ps. Buck, you may want to post a new post for each idea/feature with the feature name in the heading - I know a lot of users come into the Forums and just scan the headings and we could be losing some valuable opinions/debates by hidden info. It also helps when I scan Forums for requirements (I don't drill into each post) - just an idea ;)

Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players

11/25/2006 4:07 PM

	Buck Anderson
45 posts
www.justnorth.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

Modified By Buck Anderson on 11/25/2006 6:09:39 PM)

rod wrote
ps. Buck, you may want to post a new post for each idea/feature with the feature name in the heading - I know a lot of users come into the Forums and just scan the headings and we could be losing some valuable opinions/debates by hidden info. It also helps when I scan Forums for requirements (I don't drill into each post) - just an idea ;)

I will do that , Rod.

iCal:

In answer to your question. I am using Windows 2000 server with ie6. IE7 is not available for Win 2000 (Microsoft you dummies)

1. Is iCalendar a built in feature of IE7? All I can see on the net is that a user has to purchase it.

2. If it is included with IE7, and does not work for IE6 users - how manay IE6 users are still out there and will get an err when they click the iCal button on Events?

The error I receive is operation failed - an object can't be found.

Is there a way to do a code look see, and if iCalendar is installed on the machine, then show the button. Or a statement that you can download iCalendar, etc. (similar to media player and Adobe reader)?

Just passing you thoughts. We don't want to make the user experience any more confusing then it needs to be...

BTW - what does it take to show paragraph breaks in this forum. The html shows they are there... :o)

Buck Anderson JustNorth Outdoors www.justnorth.com

11/26/2006 4:05 AM

	Rodney Joyce
3064 posts
www.DNNDir.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

The iCal button should just dump out an XML file (named <EventName>.ics and in the .iCalendar format) onto your local drive. At this stage it should not matter if you can read it or not, but it should dump it out. IF you had Outlook installed and it was associated with .ics files (automatically I believe), then it would intervene and ask if you wanted to open it in Outlook (which is what happens on mine). It is not a feature of any program and should not require any downloads - it is merely a standard to export calendar data between compatible iCalendar apps.

So, what I need you to do is try some other iCal exports (Google Calendar or one of the others) and see if that works. If it does then it may be an error in my implementation, and if it doesn't then it helps me narrow down the problem.

I don't know if the reason it is failing is because of IE6 - you are the first person to report the error and that's the only difference I can see so far. I am in the process of setting up a virtual machine to test IE6.

Definitely agree with your comments on aconfusing user experience - we need to find the cause of the problem first so we can find the best solution.

Line breaks- it's something to do with this skin/FTB - cannot figure it out! I use Firefox and the line breaks work but I noticed they do not in IE7... very odd - another problem on my list ;)

Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players

11/26/2006 9:38 AM

	Buck Anderson
45 posts
www.justnorth.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

Hi Rod,

I have now tested it on a xp machine with outlook 2003 and IE7.

1. When you click iCal button, a dialog box opens and asks to open or save the file.

2. If I click open:

a. I found out that Outlook must be open

b. I opened outlook and tried again to open iCal. It appeared that iCal did it's job on the events detail page but - When I switched to outlook, I got the same message that operation failed and could not find an instance of the object.

I could save the file to disk. But that doesn't do much good - eh?

Buck Anderson JustNorth Outdoors www.justnorth.com

11/26/2006 10:06 AM

	Rodney Joyce
3064 posts
www.DNNDir.com

Re: Events clarification pleasew (N/A)

Hi Buck,

Ok, so it looks more likely to be an IE6 issue then.

It's fairly common in the major calendar apps (30 Boxes, Google Calendar, Upcoming etc.) to export it to disk in a .ics file. Outlook is just one of the many applications to import them into but you must be able to load it from disk (most web calendar sites have import facities where you browse your drive for .ics files to import).

Can you try any other .ics exporting program please? I need to know if your set up is failing on all .ics files (in which case there is not much I can do) or if it is only on .ics files generated by the Events module (then the XML file may be wrong, but it's quite a basic file).

Thanks
Rodney
See our modules in action on PokerDIY, a social network for home poker players