* CalendarScript from Matt Kruse
I have looked at many Web calendars and few have impressed me as much as the focus of today’s newsletter, CalendarScript from Matt Kruse (see editorial links below).
If you read the last issue of this newsletter, you will recognize Kruse’s name – he authored the IE Context Menu Toolset I discussed. Kruse is obviously very talented as his calendar implementation avoids many of the problems I have found in Web calendars: CalendarScript is easy to set up, can be easily customized, is very reasonably priced, and looks good. This last attribute is the least common in Web calendars – most of them are downright ugly.
CalendarScript is written in Perl so it will run on any system that has Perl5 installed and a Web server with CGI execution enabled. You’ll also have to have cookies and JavaScript enabled in your browser to run the administration application.
Installation is very simple – unpack the archive and copy to the server setting the permissions on the two main scripts and the files in the calendarscript directory. On my server, the script ran first time with no other tweaking but should you have difficulties the online documentation is excellent and thorough.
You can create multiple calendars, define users with privileges that include creating and editing calendars, approving pending events, managing users, modifying the look and feel of calendars, etc. This really impressed me, as the level of control over user permissions is very detailed.
The calendar can display a current day view as well as one-, two-, three- and four-month views in either a standard calendar grid view or as a list. You can search for events and clicking on an event will display a detailed view that shows the event name and description.
There is an extensive guide to customization of the templating system (the software is really well engineered and documented) and there’s even a plug-in feature that allows you to add any functionality you need in an organized manner.
You can download and install the entire calendar system without any strings attached – when you are convinced it is what you want, you pay. This might constitute a new software-licensing category: Trustware.
CalendarScript is an outstanding Web calendar and at $85 for a single installation that can display any number of calendars and have any number of users defined, it is incredible value. There’s even a reduced price, $50, for non-profits, schools, and other worthy organizations.
