Regarding iCal Usability

Marco, in a post about mediocre Apple software, complained that “Moving the ‘drawer’ event-editing interface into an annoying popup, [introduced] even more interface quirks and unnecessary clicks.”

The latest version of iCal made a few interface improvements, and the pop-up editor should be counted as one of them. Perhaps it’s time to do a usability tear-down. I won’t pretend to be unbiased, but I will try to back my points up with examples. For those of you following along at home, I’m comparing iCal version 2.0.5 to version 3.0.5 simply because those are the versions installed on my old laptop and new one.

The immediate differences are obvious, when side by side. Taking advantage of the new unified title bar and toolbar look in Leopard, the day/week/month segmented control and the search box have been moved to the window’s toolbar, where they’re more prominent. Also, the mini-month view has been redesigned, and the editing drawer has been replaced with a pop-up editor.

The redesign of the mini-month view was much needed. The new view is roomier and offers more information. It uses three-letter abbreviations for the weekdays instead of the cryptic initial letters. When the first and last weeks of the current month share days with the previous and next months, they are now shown, but in a much lighter gray. By grouping the previous and next arrows around the month label, their function is more intuitive. The confusing diamond button in the old month view has been replaced by a “Today” button in the toolbar. Overall, these improvements are subtle but worthwhile.

I found the editing drawer in version 2 problematic. I would frequently move the window to one side of my screen to transcribe info into new events, but the drawer would get hidden off the edge. So I’d usually just keep the damn thing closed. At least the drawer did the right thing (it would automatically open on the side of the window with enough room) when double-clicking calendar whitespace to add a new event. But double-clicking an existing event only selected the event name for editing. To edit the event, I had to either type Command – I or click the info button in the bottom right corner of the window.

In version 3, double-clicking an event will always bring up the info pop-up, and double-clicking whitespace in the calendar will create a new event and bring up the editing pop-up. I haven’t found the pop-up to be quirky at all. However, double-clicking the date portion of a square in month view will switch to view that day.

There is one major issue I still have with iCal. Its time zone support has sucked from day one, and I have never been able to get event times to stay consistent across time zones. It’s some sort of black magic or something, and I don’t have the time to figure it out. Overall, the under-the-hood issues with the software are more annoying than any interface quirks.