Looking for a Stand-Alone Calendar App? 100
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."
One bird too late (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Well, (Score:5, Insightful)
Mozilla, do it for the old farts!
Re:One bird too late (Score:4, Informative)
i think another welcomed edition to this of suite of apps would be a contacts editor, and task editor (much akin to the outlook suite's combination of apps). the day you can syntax exchange amongst the mozilla suite across all 3 big platforms (*nix, windows, mac) would be a great day.
Re:One bird too late (Score:1)
I'm just kidding... get a sense of humor whoever mods me down.
One bird too late-D-BUS (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:One bird too late (Score:2)
Re:One bird too late (Score:3, Funny)
Don't worry... due to naming issues Sunbird will shortly be renamed Sunfox. And Thunderbird will be called Thunderfox. All will be well, except for both apps sounding like poor porn star names
Re:One bird too late (Score:4, Funny)
Re:One bird too late (Score:1)
Re:One bird too late (Score:4, Informative)
Of course, you can't really launch it just by itself (or maybe you can - pointing firefox to the main XUL file of the app should be enough?).
Re:One bird too late (Score:2)
"D:\Program Files\Mozilla\thunderbird\thunderbird.exe" --calendar
That pops up the calendar right spiffy. You can also do --addressbook to run the address book/contact list without needing all of Thunderbird loaded.
Not sure if it'll work as a Firefox plugin, but I'd imagine it should...
Re:One bird too late (Score:1)
Still in early development phase... (Score:4, Insightful)
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!
Still in early development phase...PDA (Score:1, Interesting)
Or I guess he could write [theopensourcery.com] his own. There's certainly enough tech out there.
Ack! Bloat! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:1)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:2)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:2)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Ack! Bloat! (Score:2)
No, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:3, Insightful)
Waiting for Chandler (Score:2)
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, e
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:2)
The way Outlook is designed to work, it does make sense to put everything there. An awful lot of people conduct their entire business day in their Outlook window. Their whole business day is conducted through that one piece of s/w. Opening extra apps to manage contacts or schedule a meeting does not make sense, for them.
Contacts/email/calendar/tasks/notes/corporate intranet/some HTML financial reporting....all the same, throu
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:5, Insightful)
Outlook doesn't really show its power until you connect it to an Exchange server. Everything on the Exchange server can be shared -- Email, Contacts, and Calendars. You may think this sucks, but once you see it in action you can appreciate it. Imagine you work in a company of 1000+ people (not even that many to prove my point, but...). Now, you or your secretary needs to schedule a meeting for 50 people. But at what time?! How do you know what is the best time for everyone?
1. Select your 50 people to invite from the global contacts list (which contains your entire company of 1000+, you can look anyone up)
2. Look at Outlook's availability chart. There is probably a better name for this, but when you schedule a meeting, it shows you a grid of people's names along the left, and times along the top. Each box is color coded as to what that person has in his/her schedule! (I.e., free, tentatively busy, busy). Just look for the colume with the most free times and you've now just picked an optimal meeting time. It doesn't say what you're doing (privacy), but shows if you're available or not. However, you can also share your calendar with, say, your department or your secretary if she edits your calendar for you. I hope this makes sense -- the only other tools that really do this out there are Lotus Notes (horrid interface) and Novell Groupwise (used it a few times; requires NetWare which is expensive). Nice part about Groupwise is that it's secure.
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:2)
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:2)
Most users use some sub-set of the non-email features of outlook, but only that subset that they know how to use.
When they do know how to use it (like MS Office) it tends to get used for stuff it is not the best solution for: e.g. using Outlook folders to distribute information when a web server could do a better job.
Pine? (Score:2)
How are you going to "integrate" a terminal email client with a GUI calendar app?
Re:Pine? (Score:2)
Re:No, I didn't RTFA (Score:1)
So, erm, what was the question again? (Score:4, Funny)
Stealing from Pontiac again... (Score:3, Funny)
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.
Re:Stealing from Pontiac again... (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't use Outlook's calendar (Schedule Plus) on my laptop except as a backup for my PDA. Frankly, it's annoying that I can't turn off the alarms on my laptop without turning them off on the PDA as well, so there's an opening for an open-source solution to do Microsoft one better.
I can't switch from the Windows XP that came on my laptop until everything I do can be done with open software. This isn't my game PC, so it doesn't have to run Windows games, but among other things it does have to run Outlook so I can sync my PDA's calendar.
By the way, there are more email clients than just Thunderbird. Sunbird better work with them, too [slashdot.org].
Re:Stealing from Pontiac again... (Score:1)
Re:Stealing from Pontiac again... (Score:2)
Re:Stealing from Pontiac again... (Score:1)
Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Re:Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:4, Funny)
They could call it "The Mozilla Suite" and have them all tightly integrated with lots of overlapping code to conserve resources. There would be no problems maintaining a project this large. There would be no bloat or cruft or bugs, and we would achieve software nirvana.
Re:Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:1)
Re:Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:3, Interesting)
Someone who has realized that to have a meeting you have to TELL people about!
Once you schedule a meeting in a Calandaring app, you need to send emails to the participants.
The Address book in Thunderbird/Mozilla is not that useful compared to Outlook/Maximizer and other organizers. If I could have a Moz-based Organizer I could finally kill the VMware box that runs Outlook.
Re:Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:1)
I never want to deal with Netscape Navigator, Composer, and all that jazz again. Ugh.
-toomuchPerl
Re:Thunderbird + Sunbird (Score:1)
both GNOME and KDE offer something (Score:1)
"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.
sync (Score:3, Interesting)
Didnt see anytinh about it on the site.
Re:sync (Score:2, Interesting)
iCal (Score:2, Insightful)
A
Re:iCal (Score:1)
Re:iCal (Score:2)
I have my calendar, to which my wife subscribes. She has her calendar and a kids' calendar, to which I subscribe. Any changes she makes to her calendars show up on mine, and then on my Palm Pilot when I sync.
I just hope that the new version of iCal with 10.4 includes more robust workgroup/multi-user features that do not require editing config files to get WebDAV working, and allow simultaneous multi-user publish and subscribe.
-ccm
Pro-bloat (Score:1, Interesting)
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 replacement (Score:2, Interesting)
What you want (Score:2)
Evolution [ximian.com]
Kontact [kde.org]
Kontact Features [kde.org]
Old School (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Old School (Score:2)
Remind is written in simple C. The GUI is in TK. It should compile and run on anything resembling *nix, including MacOS, and Cygwin. Remind is licenced under the GPL.
Rainlendar (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re:Rainlendar (Score:2)
Do we really need another? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:4, Insightful)
But how much does Outlook cost? How much do the Microsoft versions cost? Aren't those people paying for Outlook already? Doesn't Outlook cost about 90-100 bucks per copy? Isn't a $60 alternative cheaper?
You could have said they are interested in costs associated with migration or conversion, but you didn't, you just insisted on the price per copy.
If people are asking for open-source alternatives to Microsoft products, I hope they do so because of the benefits of open-source, not because they are cheap bastards who try to replace a $100 priced product with a $15 one (or a free one) and get the same functionality, if possible. Jeez, wouldn't that be nice. Of course such a product would fly off the shelves. I wonder why the heck Sun isn't making one and selling it for $15. Perhaps because they can't afford to?
I really wanted to smack you with a Troll flag, but I noticed some people actually find you insightful, which is down right ridiculous. "You have to pay for this, you have to pay for that"-- OF COURSE you have to pay, that's how programmers get to eat.
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:2)
I agree with you completely, but then I understand how both the F/OSS world and the commercial world works.
The problem is, the people who are "in charge" of IT departments and budgets are not always the most logical people (think "PHB")... and many of the ones I speak of have zero exposure to Linux.
They are afraid of such a drastic change, and they're used to MS's "oh, that's extra $ too" methods, so when discussing a Linux solution and they hear "oh, you have to buy this and that to get those functionalit
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:2)
If you have a licensed Exchange Server, you receive the same amount of Outlook licenses as you have Exchange CALs. Exchange CALs [cdw.com] are going for around $65, add in another $25 or so for Software Assurance. So, assuming you're using the Ximian connector to connect to Exchange, no $60 isn't cheaper than incl
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:2)
Name one. The best I've found is ical [annexia.org]. It's a very sad statement that although over 10 years old, no one has written anything better in that time. Yes, it has flaws. But fewer than any of the alternatives. Lots of calendar apps? Yep. But they all suck. And that's not a healthy position for us to be in.
Repeat after me: "A calendar has no place in an email user agent". Anyone that beli
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:2)
And again, I agree completely with someone who thinks they don't agree with me.
I agree that calendars should be separate from email clients... same with web browsers and news readers.
I personally use Sylpheed for email, and a big part of why I do is the fact that it does NOT do HTML rendering - it is a pure email client.
I also use pure news-readers, not a web-browser, and not a web portal to a newsgroup ('cept when searching).
Unfortunately, there are (for the sake of this discussion) two types of people
Exchange replacement (Score:2)
Re:Do we really need another? (Score:2)
The Kroupware project, with the Kolab server, is an Outlook replacement. It was paid for by the government for their own use (GPL obviously), and uses all the standard KDE email, calendar features.
It also integrates with "legacy" Outlook clients, and legacy Exchange servers. That functionality costs you money, but hey, so does Outlook and Exchange!
Other than that, if you're really serious about groupware, and need it to work and
Stand-alone Calendar App? (Score:1)
Todo Application (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Todo Application (Score:2)
Re:Todo Application (Score:2)
If you're on Windows or Mac, just use Palm Desktop. It's a free download, and it offers all of the above. Quite useful on it's own, and it works with a Palm device like, well, it was (cough) made for it...
Alternatively, consider a web-based alternative like Yahoo's or (soon) Google's hosted services.
Re:Todo Application (Score:2)
I have a system that works well for me now, with Evolution at both home and work synced via a Palm Clie. I'm happy, but I'm always on the look-out for ways to improve what I have.
PIM users (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
mmm... (Score:3, Funny)
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!
Full PIM needed (Score:3, Interesting)
Plan (Score:2)
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 [bitrot.de].
Plan has seen years of work on it, has lots of nice features, configurable birthdays, etc.
KOrganizer ? (Score:2)
A Windows Calendar App (Score:1)
iCal (Score:2)
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 i
iCal (Score:2)
Thank you, Apple.
Calendar Software (Score:4, Informative)
A grumpy editor's calendar search [lwn.net]
Enterprise Solutions Overview [osdl.org]
Open Source Overview [linuxmafia.com]
Linux Links [linuxlinks.com]
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 [fuzzymonkey.org].
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 (Score:1, Informative)
Evolution + 'Connectors | OpenOffice's GLOW (Score:2)
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.org], 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 promisi