iCal

You might have noticed that I did not discuss iCal, when talking about MicroContent clients. I was not sure where it would fit in. As OpenEvents are a genuine MicroContent type, according to Marc Canter, one would expect that iCal will fit in somewhere. So time to have a look.

At first look iCal seems to have a three pane interface. The view pane is created as a drawer and shows the details of a single event, such as the from-date/time, the to-date/time, the attendees (a link with the AddressBook), a status (tentative/confirmed/cancelled), repeat (every day/week/month/year/etc.), end-date, alarm-setting (message, message+sound, email, open file), the calendar, a URL-field and a Notes-field.

The categories-pane shows lists, which are called here calendars. With a check-box one can indicate which calendars must be shown in the items-pane. The items-pane is really different from the items-pane in the other MicroContent clients. The items-pane is here a grid, which is defined by time or date depending on the view that is chosen (day/week/month). And the items in the calendars are put on this grid depending on the time or date of the item. It is also possible to view the events in a column-mode. And the to-do-items are also presented in a simple column-mode.

iCal seems to follow the three-pane approach to MicroContent clients. But this does not mean that iCal supports MicroContent. For this to be true it must support subscribing and publishing. And it does. One can subscribe to calendars using a subscribe-option. This will link a public available ical-file into your client. And it is possible to publish (and synchronise) a calendar on a Webdav-server.

Thus iCal really supports MicroContent as I am thinking about it. But I guess there are still some ingredients missing, which ones?

Categories/tags: client
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Comments

Hey dude

Not sure if you realize a) there’s a standard called iCal as well.  So you might wanna differentiate between the Apple program/service - and the standard.

b) you talk very specifically about the ‘micro-content item panes’.  But remember - there mught be popular or successful micro-content interfaces but there will never be just ONE micro-content interface.

a) I might have mixed up the name for the application and the standard that is used to the publish the data.

b) I agree that the item-panes will look differently, but that is not to say that the applications will be different. I think that most functions of a Microcontent client are independent of the Microcontent type. Thus with a single application it is possible to manage any Microcontent. Although I admit that dedicated applications might be more useful as they add dedicated functions. Just as iPhoto is different from iCal or iTunes.

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