* CoffeeCup now does calendars
I love Flash content in Web pages: In terms of interactivity and functionality you can get more bang for the byte out of Flash than any other Web user interface delivery system. And given the large number of skilled developers out there, there is pretty much guaranteed to be a solution for any given user interface functionality you might need.
In previous newsletters I’ve discussed Flash many times and raved about several Flash development systems (see a list of those newsletters here). Network World’s Gearhead column has also covered a number of Flash products, including such outstanding tools as Crystal Xcelsius.
So, continuing with my slight obsession (I swear I can kick the habit at any time) today I have a small and low-cost Flash-based control that you might find extremely useful.
The control is the recently released Web Calendar from CoffeeCup Software.
Web Calendar is really simple to use. It comes with a graphical IDE (written in Flash) with two modes: Designer and Events.
Designer mode provides a display of how the current calendar will look. Under this mode is the Settings mode which allows selection of small, medium, or large layouts, color scheme, background graphic, calendar title, sound to play when the calendar is clicked, border visibility and color, date format, and transparency. The Advanced mode allows you to edit the text for each day and month to allow for calendars to be presented in different languages.
Events mode is where you define the events that your calendar will display. Events can be non-repeating or repeat daily, weekly, or monthly; they can span multiple days and they can be identified as holidays. The event text can include italic, bold, and underline decoration as well as URL that become active links.
When you have defined your calendar and events, selecting Save lets you specify the save location, lists the files that are generated, and provides the HTML content that needs to be added to a Web page to display the calendar. Web Calendar also includes a built-in FTP client so you can upload directly to a Web site from the IDE.
The calendars generated by Web Calendar are somewhat generic – they all work the same way and use the same layout – what you control is color and decoration as well as calendar content. When you mouse over a calendar entry that is defined, a panel appears at the top of the calendar and displays the beginning of the event text. Click on the date and a display panel opens over the calendar display all of the text.
The actual events are stored in a file in XML format that are read into the calendar display when the Web page is loaded. This means that the XML file can be modified but the calendar control must be reloaded for any new or changed events to be shown.
While you can deploy Web Calendar on any site by editing the HTML, the help file also goes into detail on how to integrate the calendars with content editing systems such as FrontPage, NetObjects and Dreamweaver.
There are a few demos on the product’s home page and a 21-day trial is available. The full product is available for a measly $34. If you need to add a calendar to your Web site and have it up and working fast, this is a product you should definitely take a look at.
