Monthly Calendar

In the download section, I showed you some basic usage of MonthlyCalendar. Now, we go into the details.

Calendar Events

To work with a single calendar event, always start by zooming into a specify day. From there, you can either click on an existing event, or choose "Add Event" from the menu to create a new event.

When you add a new event, the "edit event" screen comes up. You see all the usual suspects there:

• Title: The event title; that is what is shown in the monthly view.
• Begin and end date: Click on them to choose a date.
• Begin and end time: Also click on them to choose.
• All day checkbox: Such an event is measured by days, not by hours.
• Duration textbox: Enter a number of hours/days. Press enter or leave the field to apply.
• Description area: Enter text, notes, etc. to your hearts content.
• There are also "save" and "cancel" buttons on the screen. Alternatively, you can use the menu button on your phone to get these.

If you click on an existing event, the "view event" screen appears. There is really not much to do here: Swipe up and down to scroll, in case the description takes more place than the screen allows.

To go from here, press the menu button on your phone. "Edit" brings you to the "edit event" screen described above, "Delete" deletes this event (without asking for confirmation, so be careful!).

Gestures

Gestures (drawing on the screen with one finger) can only be performed in the monthly view. Currrently, there are three gestures available:

	"Ice"	Do a counter-clockwise spiral and it will take you to today.
	"Fire"	Do an upside-down christian fish (begin at top left) and you can choose a date to jump to.
	"Thunder"	Do a thunder motion from top to bottom (spike on the right) and the settings will pop up.

All gesture functions are also reachable by context menu.

Search

In MonthlyCalendar, search is one of the coolest functions. Either press the search button on your phone, or go through Menu→Search in the monthly view.

A search field appears at the top of the screen, and you can instantly type forth. From two letter on, results are loaded dynamically while you are typing. For fun, you can press the actual search button, but this is mostly unnecessary. Click on one of the results and it will take you to the "event view" screen of the given calendar event.

Results are ordered by date, with the future ones being higher up.

Settings (Preferences)

What would any app be without some settings?

The first one is the most important, it determines which calendar is going to be used. You can have multiple calendars on an Android phone (e.g. Google Calendar, PC Sync, Exchange), and an event must belong to one. Either choose "Ask me" if you use multiple accounts, or choose one to always use.

The second one is a nice useful extra: Do you want the birthdays of your contacts automatically integrated? This way, you do not need to manage their birthdays as calendar events.

Continuing, the next section is concerned with date formats. You can choose the general date format (e.g. 2010-12-31, used throughout MonthlyCalendar), the monthly format (used in the title of the monthly view), and the weekday format (used in the home screen widget).

I give a lot of freedoms here, basically you can type anything that is allowed in Android DateFormat. Be warned that if you enter something stupid here, the app will display very strange dates.

Then, the font sizes come. The first two are concerned with the monthly view: Basically the small and the big text. The third one is used for event viewing and editing.

The End of the Road

Any questions open? Then travel to the contact section and leave me a note.