Problem:
I personally cannot see how the calendar or timeline views can be used in practice at the moment. The information they can display effectively is so limited, the only way to make them useful for us in any way is to have people apply CSS overrides.
Some suggestions:
Support the different Card layouts used in the Board layout in all views
Support customizing the number of lines shown before ellipsing the text (truncate, line-clamp) or to show all of any text field that is shown in the card
Add (or repurpose existing) card layout to have the following (see screenshots below)
Two areas in the card, where the first and second area can grow in height as needed
The first area would be taken up by the first field selected in the fields menu for the view
Bottom area can be configured to keep everything on one line or to show each field per line
Compare fibery’s card to other competitors in different contexts (equivalent of a board view, calendar view, timeline view, etc)
Example card configurations (doesn’t show version with field labels):
I know this topic is old news, but it is still very much needed to make Timeline and Calendar views more flexible in Fibery.
It would be amazing to be able to show cards in these views instead of just lines.
It would also be very welcome for every view style if it was possible to choose a card size per database, for example to be able to show different entity types in the same board but at varying levels of detail.
Below is a quick mockup of another card layout option I’d love to see for calendars. Ideally I want to see the full month all at once, but I need expanded cards to see relevant information. A combination of boards and calendars would be amazing. Especially if you could color code and select to highlight.
Yeah sorry, I think the colors made it confusing - I also created it quickly in Bluebeam, so it’s not very clear. Hope the below description helps, but let me know if not.
@rothnic’s mockup above shows a calendar with card layouts, which gives you more detail but also increases the size of the calendar so you (potentially) can’t see the full month without scrolling. His example also only shows single day cards.
Instead, I’m suggesting to combine a board view and a calendar view. You would have a single column of cards on the left side to the screen (similar to creating a board view without identifying columns) which would automatically filter by the month the calendar is showing. This “card column” would show your desired relevant fields and allow you to quickly scroll through this month’s items and look for red flags while still seeing the big picture from the calendar. Ideally, clicking or hovering over a card would then highlight that item on the calendar (to help quickly match if there’s a lot of items). Also, being able to conditionally color full cards makes it easy to differentiate overlapping and if it’s a problem (e.g. different colors for different project teams, etc.).
The example shown is for a small construction project. I mocked this up because I wanted a single view where I can see the overlap of activities, while also viewing summary details about those activities. So the calendar view quickly lets me see how the activities overlap, while that card column would show summary information about those activities (% procurement statuses, subcontractors involved, QAQC checks, etc.). The colors in my example would be to help differentiate between project zones.
Not trying to make this more confusing, but I think you could take this idea further with the card column not being restricted to the items on the calendar, but being able to pick a relationship instead. So for my example, I could either show the construction activities, or I could show a list of my project’s subcontractors (which are assigned to these activities). Similarly pulling relevant summary fields (buyout complete, submittals complete, etc.). But then clicking on a subcontractor could highlight all of their activities that month on the calendar view. So this card column becomes both a way to quickly review a big picture, quickly review details, and having an easy “quick filter”.
Yeah, that’s helpful, and is somewhat what I thought you were getting at. It’s an interesting idea, and I think some elements of it should certainly be considered. I do wonder if there’s a more generalized way to handle this though, something that could have even broader utility. Maybe I’m going too broad here, but for example might it at other times be valuable to have two other types of views side-by-side, and the data somehow (optionally) linked? In your example the width of the “cards column” on the left very much needs to be that small to give room for the calendar, so that’s different than what we currently have with the “Panes navigation”. Panes could maybe be resizable. Another thought is perhaps something akin to the slide-out Properties/Fields sidebar that you get when the screen width is too narrow to show an Entity’s right-column Fields, but being able to Pin that. Just thinking out loud here a bit…
Getting back to your core concept: I definitely like the idea of a way to view a sort of overview calendar, and then have a dedicated place (sidebar/column/etc.) to see more detail about specific items, and/or to view the on-screen items in a different way (vertical list rather than calendar). I would find this extremely useful as the current calendar view is just too limited to get all the context I want, even on a 4k screen. And clicking into each task just to view some (more) basic info feels too cumbersome and slow.
If there were a sidebar, I would probably want it to have its own Filters because in list format, especially in a narrow column, the entire contents of a Calendar page could be quite a long scroll. Some kind of nice, quick filters would help a lot there.
Another thought might be some type of on-hover item popup/expansion? This would have to be handled carefully to not be obtrusive, and maybe it would be best be handled with a hotkey key combo (e.g. Ctrl + Mouseover, like an Obsidian plugin I use). So you’d basically get a popup of the full card view on-hover, giving you the context/additional info you need without having to find the thing in a separate sidebar. I see some value in the sidebar too, but I’m not sure it’s the best solution.
Lots to think about! Bottom line: we need more quick access to info in Calendar, even just to be able to see longer titles. The current on-hover for that isn’t great IMO.
