Calendar 1.2 Beta 1 Release

So, here it is, Calendar 1.2 Beta 1 finally seeing the light of day! I’d like to thank everyone for their patience in waiting for this, I hope after giving it a try you will feel the wait has been worthwhile. The final release will come two weeks from today, after people have had a chance to test the software and report bugs in the comments field of this post.

So, before I get to the actual release link, some house rules. There will be no support for this release. If you choose to use it live, that is your shout, but if you break something or someone hacks you, its your fault and you will have to deal with it. What I am after here is bug reports and comprehensive testing. Comments about how well the tests are going, problems, bugs, security flaws are welcome. Such comments should be made in the comments field of this post only, nowhere else. I’m not taking comments and questions by e-mail because there will most likely be too many. Thanks for understanding!

Ok, so the Calendar 1.2 Beta 1 release is here. Instructions are in the readme.txt file, please read this first, especially if you are upgrading. If you are upgrading you should ensure you backup your blog and your current install of Calendar, including the database. You may very well need this if there are unforeseeable problems, or if there is an issue with the beta such that the upgrade feature fails and causes problems. Again, you test this at your own risk and while I can’t see any problems with it at my end, that doesn’t mean you won’t. If you find a problem, report it, I’ll fix it.

A final note is that those of you with keen eyes will note the Event Categories feature is missing. I don’t have much spare time as you all know so I’ve decided to leave this out of the beta because I don’t want to release something which I know to have issues due to the lack of time spent on it. During the beta phase I will work on this feature and it will make it into the final release. If testing is required of this added functionality then a beta 2 will be released instead of the final version in two weeks meaning the absolute final release will be 4 weeks from now. I hope however that because the categories feature will use much of what is being tested in the beta already, an additional beta will not be necessary.

 

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115 Comments

  1. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 4:56 pm

    WP 2.5.1. Cleaned out 1.1.2 per readme. PLaced Calendar folder in Plugins directory.

    Upon activation of the plugin received this fatal error:
    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, expecting ‘,’ or ‘;’ in /homepages/26/d118044004/htdocs/observer/wp-content/plugins/calendar/calendar.php on line 414

  2. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:25 pm

    This has now been fixed and the beta re-uploaded. Try downloading and installing again.

  3. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:35 pm

    downloaded. Upon activation – fatal error:
    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR, expecting ‘,’ or ‘;’ in /homepages/26/d118044004/htdocs/observer/wp-content/plugins/calendar/calendar.php on line 414

    Same. Did I download from the wrong place? I used the link above in the body of your post.

    -g

  4. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:40 pm

    I’ve just downloaded it and the fix is definitely there. Have you cleared your cache etc.? Used a different browser? The filename is the same so it would be easy to get things mixed up etc….

  5. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:47 pm

    Hmmm, I think there might be something quirky with the way your PHP is handling extracting items from objects, could be a difference between version 4 and 5 or something if you are running version 4? Anyway, I’ve re-release the beta again, this time with a “safe” extraction of variables on that line. This one should work for you.

  6. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:49 pm

    OK – cleaned cache. downloaded again. Upon activation, new error:
    Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_OBJECT_OPERATOR in /homepages/26/d118044004/htdocs/observer/wp-content/plugins/calendar/calendar.php on line 1279

  7. Harvey Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:55 pm

    Yeah, it has to do with differences between version 4 and 5. I’m far from a php expert, but a little googling shows that apparently version 4 doesn’t allow that type of syntax whereas version 5 does. The same problem happens on line 1279 which would have to be fixed as well.

  8. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 5:57 pm

    LOL, folk are on fire this evening πŸ˜‰

    Fixed and a new copy uploaded.

  9. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 6:28 pm

    Success! Thanks for the instant support. You work like I do!

    Yes I’m using php4 on that installation. All seems well at the moment. Jump bar works, rt/lft month arrows work. Today’s events widget seems OK. I’ll put it through its paces today – I have to add a dozen events or so – and post back here.

    Question – not sure if this is just a function of the Mac OS/Safari or not. But on the event pop up, if I highlight a full url (i.e. http://www.corporatewriting.com) and right click, the contextual menu gives me the option of going to that url (straight, new tab, new window etc).

    This is a fantastic feature that makes the calendar active vs. just informational. (think club or community calendar with links to other sites etc in the event listing.) If there was a way on your end to make url’s “live” in the description or the title so they could just be clicked vs. highlighted & right clicked, you’d have 80% of the functionality needed for a community calendar.

    Is that programmatically feasible?

    -geoff

  10. Harvey Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 6:59 pm

    First, thanks for a great plugin!

    I’ve got the beta up and running now, but the display seems a little off. Each event is displayed one day after it is supposed to (events defined on May 10th display on the 11th, etc.). It might have something to do with setting the first day of the week to Sunday, though changing the WordPress setting doesn’t change this behavior. Any ideas? If no one else has this problem, then the issue is probably somewhere on my end.

  11. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:00 pm

    Download updated again; events were showing a day ahead of what they should have been doing in the calendar.

    Ah, I see what you are asking; you want html that contains a hyperlink to be rendered so that it is clickable in the description field.

    The reason that isn’t done at the moment is an IE issue (damn M$!). If an html tag isn’t an a tag, the element:hover feature doesn’t work. Only a:hover is supported in IE. This means that to alter the code to allow you to do what you want to do would be to break the hover for every IE user. (You cannot have an a tag inside an a tag you see which is why your links don’t work; to make it pop up I have to put the whole event details box in an a tag).

    If you have some genius HTML/CSS hack to get round this that won’t break IE and will give you what you want I’ll change the code to accommodate it πŸ™‚

  12. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:02 pm

    Ah Harvey, star beta tester, beat me to it by a minute! The download has been updated, re-download and install, you should find the issue fixed πŸ™‚

  13. Harvey Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:04 pm

    Downloaded it again and it most certainly is fixed. Thanks.

  14. Gordon Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:41 pm

    Kieran,

    I am excited to see the release! I remember there being mention of ability to change the starting day of the week. Did this end up getting trimmed out completely, is it intended for the final release only, or am I just being blind and not seeing where that option is?

    Thanks

  15. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:42 pm

    Unfortunately I’m a designer/content guy – not a coder, so no hack from my end. Is that all IE’s or just versions below 7?

    How about making the events clickable as well? With a static window, then live urls in the event description would be no problem? I clicking would force a page refresh every time wouldn’t it?

    Or, possibly the coolest, what if the event title itself could be a hyperlink (checkbox w/url in the add event form) that gives you the hover window on mouseover but is a live url (target = new window) when clicked?

    Sorry – us designers tend to be pie in the sky!

  16. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 7:53 pm

    Day if week – I changed to Sunday in the standard WP settings page and the calendar instantly conformed…

    -gb

  17. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 8:06 pm

    Gordon, you want to go to Settings in WordPress and then set “Week starts on” to either Sunday or Monday. The system will assume Monday unless you specify Sunday. Once you do that you should see it change. If it doesn’t, its a bug, let me know.

    Geoff, in theory it shouldn’t be IE7 as well, but my experience is that the problem does still occur in IE7.

    Separate windows/pages to display events were discussed when new features were being decided and were ruled out for semantic and aesthetic reasons. The title could be a link, I guess, but I can’t see the majority using it, and thats who I’m coding this for.

    If you want something specific my company can give you a reasonable quote for providing a custom version πŸ˜‰

  18. Harvey Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 8:18 pm

    Question – Did the pop up mini calendars for selecting the date(s) for an event make it into the beta? If so, is there something that needs to be done to enable them?

  19. Geoff Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 8:31 pm

    I very well may take you up on your offer depending on my clients’ desires.

    I totally understand the sentiment regarding the separate windows.

    Still, if put to a vote, I’d bet more than half would see utility in optionally allowing the title to also be a link… πŸ˜‰

    Terrific plugin. I’ll report any anomalies as I exercise it over the next couple of days.

    -geoff

  20. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 8:42 pm

    Harvey, no, I seem to have omitted this code *whoops*. I’ll get it added before the final release though. Its just JavaScript, so won’t have any bugs as far as functionality is concerned – it merely populates fields when things are clicked.

    Geoff, no problem, if you want a quote at some point in the future you know where to go πŸ˜‰

    As for putting it to a vote, I’ve done exactly that – see my sidebar.

    Thanks for the efforts with your testing, look forward to hearing your feedback.

  21. Harvey Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 8:48 pm

    No worries…I’m employed by a small software company and unfortunately completely understand the meaning of ‘beta’ =)

    I look forward to the final release and will let you know of anything else I find as I play with it. Thanks again!

  22. Kieran Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 9:37 pm

    Thanks πŸ™‚

    If anyone else has downloaded and tried this, please leave feedback and bug reports when you are ready. It will help a lot.

  23. Ian H. Said,

    May 7, 2008 @ 11:36 pm

    Excellent! I’m testing right now on my home server and not seeing any issues… I’ll try and put in some typical events and see if I can break it πŸ˜€ … The “today’s events” and “upcoming events” widgets are great!

  24. Niraj Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 12:38 am

    This is a very nice plugin. Several things don’t work on this beta release, on my own server and they also do not work on your Lara one.

    1. Widget does not have mouse-overs to see the details of an event.

    2. Internet Explorer 6 does not work on the mouse-overs for the full-size Calendar within a page.

    Thanks!

  25. Niraj Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 1:17 am

    Oh, forgot to mention…

    3. The widget in the sidebar puts up an empty Title for the widget:

    4. Please allow me to rename/retitle the widget and remove your built-in “Upcoming Events” title for the widget.

    Thanks!

  26. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 1:52 am

    Niraj, I’ll respond to your points in turn.

    1. These weren’t supposed to have mouse-over details actually, although it would be fairly trivial to add that functionality. Is this something people want to see? If so I can add it. The problem here of course is that some people might want it, some might not, lol

    2. IE6 is a broken browser. Seriously broken in fact. This issue of mouse-overs has been discussed before and no solution was found to getting it working. If you have an HTML/CSS solution then feel free to provide it and I will publish a fix. I have as yet found no way of fixing this issue without breaking it in other (standards compliant) browsers I’m afraid.

    3. I don’t think the title is empty; it says “Todays Events” or “Upcoming Events” as appropriate, at least it does here.

    4. Looking at current WordPress widgets I can see that it is possible to change the title of some of them. I will have to look into how this is done and try to implement it. My main concern is that I need to maintain compatibility for WordPress 2.0 and as this doesn’t support widgets it still needs to be able to use the default title. I’ll try and come up with a solution πŸ™‚

  27. Niraj Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 5:54 am

    Hello,

    To stay with the numbering ….

    1. Yes, please, put mouse-overs into the widget.

    2. I agree, IE-6 is a pain to accommodate, unfortunately, the majority of my users are using IE-6. I’ve looked around the web, found several approaches that use the prototype javascript framework. However, that is a heavy approach. Let me try a simpler approach, hope to get back to you soon.

    3&4. Take a look at the source code when the Calendar is in a widget (sidebar). You’ll notice that the widget’s title is blank. Also, the title of “Upcoming Events” is in its own .

    Thanks!

  28. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 9:38 am

    Ok, I see what you mean about the widgets, I’ll try and do something different for them so that you don’t get that nesting going on.

    I’ll put mouse overs into the widgets, its not a problem, although I might try and put some kind of option in the options panel to decide if they show or not – you are the only person so far who has asked for them – any other takers for this?

    IE6 isn’t just a pain, its in many cases impossible to accommodate without breaking things for others, compromising the look or resorting to cruft like JavaScript hacks. What with the launch of vista and the prevalence of firefox, more people are using non-IE6 browsers that are using IE6 and so these people must take priority. I will only fix the mouse-over for IE6 if someone presents a solution because believe me I’ve tried and I don’t want to waste more time on it. If you (Niraj) find a solution, or anyone else, test it, if you find it to work then I will of course implement it.

    Any other bugs anyone has to report? Security issues? Actual issues with functionality? If I’ve got away with only having stylistic or HTML issues by the end of the beta I’ve done well πŸ˜‰

  29. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 10:33 am

    In the previous version, for modify the width of the calendar I only need to edit this line:

    $calendar_body = ”;

    In the new beta version, how can I modify the width of entire calendar?

    I tried this two options…

    .calendar-table {
    border:none;
    width:90%;

    $calendar_body .= ‘

    But nothing works.

    Congratulations for this great plugin!

  30. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:14 am

    The stylesheet is there and will do what you want. I changed my development version running on Lara to be width:50% in the style block that you mention and the result is here (let me know when you have seen it so I can put it back):
    http://lara.kieranoshea.com/wp_cal/

    What happens on your copy? Surely its not overflowing your theme? It should remain within the confines of a normal WordPress page, unless of course you have an extremely narrow theme… but it would have to be VERY narrow to cause a problem.

  31. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:47 am

    I see it!

    I think the problem is what you say… overflowing. See this screenshot… http://www.elsxukurs.org/kieran.jpg
    But the theme is not very narrow!

    Don’t worry, surely is my problem… πŸ˜‰

    thank’s!

  32. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:49 am

    Solved!

    I try to edit calendar.php file, when I should edit stylesheet in calendar options!

    sorry ;-(

  33. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:52 am

    marc, I’m confused as to what is going on here.

    It seems to me that the only way what you are seeing would happen is if you upgraded from the old version but only by replacing calendar.php and leaving wp-calendar.php intact in your root as well as the .htaccess rules. This would result in the old system still being there, just calling the new calendar function and of course missing out on all the new styles in the process.

    Did you upgrade? If so how did you do it?

  34. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:58 am

    Yes I updated, but before I desactivated the old version plugin, and install new in other folder. I see 2 calendar plugins in plugins page, the old and the new, but I only have activated the new one.

    Don’t worry kieran, I think is my little knowledge… πŸ˜‰

    For the moment works great!

  35. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 12:02 pm

    Yes, but how are you now accessing the calendar? Using the {CALENDAR} tag in a page? Or using yourdomain.com/calendar?

  36. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 2:26 pm

    using http://www.mydomain.com/calendar

    I can not show this to you online. I only have it in localhost for testing.

  37. marc Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 2:31 pm

    ok, i never read in any readme file the opcion to use {CALENDAR}… it’s really better!

    here using {CALENDAR}… http://www.elsxukurs.org/yes.jpg

    here using /calendar… http://www.elsxukurs.org/no.jpg

    really different!

  38. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 5:42 pm

    Right so a general point to all I think. Reading the readme.txt file is not optional. If you don’t read it and perform the tasks detailed there, you will not get Calendar working properly, either as an upgrade or out of the box. The steps may be simple, but you MUST read the file – thanks πŸ™‚

    Now, any more bugs or issues?

  39. Martin Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 9:45 pm

    Hey Kieran,

    I’m using the standard permalink structure, and if I click prev or next for second time, it redirects incorrect. It just seems to forget to put the ?page_id=xxx in between.
    It would be very nice for users to customize the names of the days an months, so users can set it to other languages or abbreviations.
    Apart from this, I must say you did a really great job.

    Regards,

    Martin

  40. Harvey Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 10:23 pm

    Kieran – I’ve played around with it quite a bit, and overall I everything seems to be working smoothly!

    I do have two requests though that relate to how it formats dates and times (disclaimer: I’m don’t know php…so…):

    – Would it be possible to display all dates and times in the format(s) specified in the WordPress settings? This shouldn’t be too hard as you should be able to get the user-defined formats from WordPress and apply them to the date() functions used, though I’m not sure how many date() functions would have to be changed.

    – It would be nice if users could enter times for events in formats such as “7 pm” than just the 24-hour format “19:00”. The user inputted time could be converted into the 24-hour format before storing in the database pretty easily using a command like ‘$time = date(“H:i”, strtotime($input_time))’.

    Thanks again for all your work on this. If my requests are too much work, if they just won’t work for whatever reason, or if I’m the only one who would find this useful and it doesn’t get done, I won’t hold it against you πŸ™‚

  41. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 10:55 pm

    Martin, thanks for finding that bug. I have implemented a fix and replaced the download file. Try it and see if its fixed.

    I simply don’t have the time to get proper language support going in this version but I will be doing that in version 1.3. WordPress provides functions which can be called for each piece of text and then a language file is looked at depending on what language the user is using. Obviously I would only supply an English file and to get other files someone would have to do the translations and contribute a file, but changing languages will be supported.

    Harvey, thanks for the comprehensive testing.

    The dates and times in WordPress format, yeah that can certainly be done, indeed it is already done for the dates in the sidebar widget. I’m aware though that the times are not, anywhere on the Calendar. This can be fixed. Is there anywhere else where this issue occurs?

    I’ve got something like this for the dates, although it hasn’t made it into the beta. I’ll see about doing something like this for the time before the final – I agree it needs to be done.

  42. Shawn Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:00 pm

    The site I am using the Calendar one the people would like to have the calendar events pull out. If you click on the event it goes to a new page that shows the event only that way people can see more details clearer.

    Overall the calendar is amazing if you are able to do this then that would be even better.

  43. Kieran Said,

    May 8, 2008 @ 11:18 pm

    Shawn, this idea has already been ruled out due to the semantics of displaying such a secondary page, considering the calendar is loaded in a page (or post) already. This doesn’t mean it will never happen (times change) but it is unlikely, and definitely not happening in this release.

  44. Jason Schramm Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 12:17 am

    This is not a bug but a suggestion.

    What if clicking on an event opened up a little popup window? Then you could click on links in that.

    Or at least have the option to switch from hover to popup. I know it would be a lot more usable that way for the organizations I want to use this for.

  45. Shawn Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 12:30 am

    I could see this been done with AJAX, and not having to add a new page at all. If you wanted to really do this. I mean this is an amazing feature and the only reason we would need it is for people who need to read things in better fonts.

  46. Kieran Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 7:40 am

    Ok, time to clamp down a bit here. This is beta feedback and bugs we are after, not suggestions. We had suggestions in the past for version 1.2, see here:
    http://www.kieranoshea.com/2008/02/09/next-version-calendar/

    There will be the opportunity for suggestions again when coding for 1.3 starts. Until then please keep comments related to if the beta works and if there are any bugs etc. I’m not saying suggestions are not welcome, just not at the moment when we are trying to establish if the latest round of new features actually work or not.

    Shawn, if fonts are the issue, can you not use the CSS options page and change the size of the hover and the fonts inside it? Thats the idea of the modifiable CSS πŸ˜‰

  47. Martin Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 3:36 pm

    Fixed!
    No problem, I’ll hack the language in by myself for now. I’m one of those people who can understand php codes and change/hack them, but building from scratch is one of my very problems. Feel free to contact me for future translations (into Dutch).

    Regards

  48. Kieran Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 6:12 pm

    Ok, cool, I will certainly contact you for translations when the time comes – thanks for all your help. It is worth noting that if you hack things, when new versions come out you will have to re-hack them, but I’m sure you are both aware of and prepared to do that.

  49. Martin Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 8:20 pm

    Ofcourse πŸ˜€

  50. Harvey Said,

    May 9, 2008 @ 9:53 pm

    Found a glitch in the way it handles user permissions: all users have access to the ‘Calendar Options’ subpage. They can then change the user-level required to manage the calendar defeating the purpose of the setting.

  51. Ian H. Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 1:36 am

    Found something, but I’m not sure if it’s a bug or a “feature” πŸ™‚ If you have two events on a day, and the title for the first one wraps the line, the floating popup doesn’t go away when you mouse down to the next event. This does not occur when the first event’s title is all on one line. I’m linking a picture because my description confuses even me…

    http://marturia.net/offsite/calendar.jpg

  52. Ian H. Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 1:47 am

    Okay, on further testing, it doesn’t matter if there’s anything below a split line event title. If you activate the float off the second line of the wrapped title, the float won’t go away until the mouse is no longer over the floated popup. The behaviour on one-line titles is that as soon as you move the mouse at all, the popup goes away…

    http://marturia.net/offsite/calendar2.jpg

    Other than that tiny issue, great plugin. I’ve tried every combination of events to try and break it, including multi-day events with other events starting in them, but everything comes up on the calendar just the way it’s supposed to.

    In reading the above comments, I would also appreciate the ability to title the widgets, but it’s not a big deal otherwise – the “upcoming events” is fine for what I need it for…

  53. Kieran Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 12:55 pm

    Harvey, I’m definitely not seeing that here;
    If I visit /wp-admin/admin.php?page=calendar-config
    Then I am presented with a “You do not have sufficient permissions to access this page” message and cannot see or manipulate the options page in any way, if my user level is less than the level in the options page. I take it you of course do not see this. What version of wordpress are you using? Any other particular variations? If you have it running on a site so I can have a look that would also help. You can e-mail me details if you don’t want to post them up here.

    Ian, this sounds like a simple CSS issue. I’m no expert on this stuff though so I’m not sure how to fix that. The CSS is in the Calendar Configuration page. If you fancy having a play with it to try and fix it then you’d be most welcome. I see the same behaviour, in fact always have even with the old version, but its never fussed me that much – I’ve always thought it was just a quirk of the way the CSS was rendered when there was wrapping going on.

  54. Harvey Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 4:11 pm

    Kieran – I’m using wordpress 2.5.0 with just the security fixes from 2.5.1 (not the whole upgrade, as described in the wordpress release blog). If needed, I can do the full upgrade to 2.5.1 and retest. I see this behavior with all other plugins disabled.

    I just retested a few cases, and it doesn’t happen for all user-levels. Logging in with a ‘subscriber’ account (with the calendar user-level permission set to ‘administrator’) the problem doesn’t exist. One case I see with the problem (and there might be others, I didn’t try ’em all) is setting the user-level permission in calendar to ‘administrator’ logging in with an ‘editor’ account.

    Can you give this specific case a try to see if you can reproduce it?

  55. Kieran Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 5:08 pm

    Ah good catch Harvey! Yes, I see it when using the settings that you suggested.

    I’ve figured out that the issue is simply one of what a user is allowed to do under the different user roles in WordPress 2.0 and WordPress 2.5. In WordPress 2.0 manage_categories was an admin only feature, but under 2.5 this seems to have moved to include editors as well. This meant that while the Manage Events permissions drop down list used the new ratings (because it was user selected), the hard coded one that restricted admin only to use calendar options was still using manage_categories which included the editor under 2.5.

    I have now fixed this issue and have re-uploaded the beta; please let me know if it is now fixed.

  56. Harvey Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 5:38 pm

    The beta zip file doesn’t seem to be working…it downloads but can’t be opened.

  57. Kieran Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 6:17 pm

    How about now?

  58. Harvey Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 6:32 pm

    nope, doesn’t seem to work still.

  59. Kieran Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 6:36 pm

    How about now, I think the permissions were wrong.

    Even after correcting the permissions on the server I still had to clear my browser cache before it would download/open properly.

  60. Harvey Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 6:47 pm

    It downloads correctly and the user-level permission problem is fixed =)

  61. Kieran Said,

    May 10, 2008 @ 6:47 pm

    Yay πŸ™‚

  62. cj Said,

    May 11, 2008 @ 3:37 pm

    Thanks for the plugin. We spent some much longer searching for a suitable plugin than we did installing this one.

    I have not downloaded the latest version, so this might have been fixed, but I tested one feature and the calendar will allow you to input an event with an earlier end date than start date and says that the event was added successfully, although there is not an event actually added.

    Here is the example I used:
    start date: 2008-06-21
    end date: 2008-05-24

    The event shows up in the events list and you can edit it so that it is correct and it will then display, but it seems like you should get a prompt that this will not really work.

    We are on WP 2.50 and the beta version of the calendar downloaded on 05/10/2008 early before the user permission fixes.

    Thanks again.

  63. Kieran Said,

    May 11, 2008 @ 5:36 pm

    Yes, this is a known issue; essentially, while the users entries are sanitised to prevent security risks, there is currently no checking of the dates as far as which one comes before or after etc. so they are just put straight into the database. This of course creates lots of problems when the event is passed through the logic that decides what events to show because it is illogical to have a start date before the end date.

    I’m currently implementing a JavaScript date selection system which will actively prevent you from choosing an end date that is before the start date, but obviously this won’t stop you entering it manually. I’ll see if I can write something in that will compare server-side too.

  64. Ian H. Said,

    May 12, 2008 @ 1:28 am

    Thanks, Kieran – I wasn’t sure if that was fixable, and it’s not that big of a deal… Good to know about the CSS, though. I can make the popups blend a little better with my site that way.

  65. Kieran Said,

    May 12, 2008 @ 1:25 pm

    Ok, well it seems like all of the bugs and issues have been found in this beta now.

    A few issues have been raised which will require a bit more work, and that combined with the missing features and the event categories will necessitate a second beta.

    I’m going to be taking a short break from development, perhaps a week or so while I get some other pressing work out of the way, after which you can expect the release of a second beta. This will be done in its own post with the same rules as this one. Beta 2 will be the last beta and when any bugs or issues have been fixed it will be made into the final version.

    One very important thing to note is; there will be no upgrade path from beta 1 to beta 2. This is because changes need to be made to the database. It is therefore important that if you are using the 1st beta you get ready to lose data because you will have to install from scratch. Please don’t say you weren’t warned about this, because you were πŸ˜‰ I’ll quickly summerise what will work and what will not with respect to upgrading:

    v1.1 » v1.2 Beta 1 » v1.2 Beta 2 (Unsupported)
    v1.2 Beta 1 » v1.2 Beta 2 (Unsupported)
    v1.1 » v1.2 Beta 2 (Supported)
    v1.2 Beta 2 (new install) (Supported)

    And into the future when the final comes out:

    v1.1 » v1.2 Beta 1 » v1.2 Beta 2 » v1.2 Final (Unsupported)
    v1.2 Beta 1 » v1.2 Beta 2 » v1.2 Final (Unsupported)
    v1.1 » v1.2 Beta 2 » v1.2 Final (Supported)
    v1.1 » v1.2 Final (Supported)
    v1.2 Beta 2 » v1.2 Final (Supported)
    v1.2 Final (new install) (Supported)

    It just remains for me to thank those who have done testing and helped significantly with this beta.

    IF and only IF you find more issues (bugs and security problems only please) with the first beta, you should post a comment in this thread still. While I probably won’t reply, I will take note of these and ensure they are fixed in the second beta. When the 2nd beta is released I will close commenting on this post.

  66. Martin Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 11:56 am

    Okay Kieran,

    I have another bug. You may see it as a suggestion, but I think it is a bug. As I try to input an event, it displays: “Error: For some bizare reason your event was not added. Why not try again?”. And it kinda annoys me not showing the real reason why the error occured. So I don’t know what problem it is… date format, incomplete form elements, etc. I guess it its something with date format, but I don’t know for sure.

    Regards

  67. Martin Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 12:11 pm

    Well… I guess I f*cked up some of my database, because when I manually recreated the database for the calendar, it started to work properly.
    But I think you should change the error code to something usefull anyway!

  68. Kieran Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 12:14 pm

    It would help if you could say what the data you entered was; this error represents a “Generic Error” which means that errors that there is code to catch didn’t occur, but some other error did. If I can ascertain that there is an error that should be caught, and what it is, I can write code to catch it. Without knowing what it is I can’t

    Knowing what data was entered will allow me to work out the error that was caused behind the scenes and code against it.

  69. Kieran Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 12:28 pm

    Well, changing the error message is not a problem, although obviously I’d like to add more distinct errors for different problems if possible.

    Was this database error seemingly caused randomly? Was it caused by adding a rogue event or something? I want to make sure Calendar is not at fault here πŸ˜‰

  70. Martin Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 3:57 pm

    The error was not the date format, it was simply because there were no tables in the database. There were tables in wp_calendar, but they were created by an other (deleted) plugin and were not removed. So maybe you should check availability of the wp_calendar_table.
    When I use another date format (like d-m-Y, which is common in Holland), the error message appears too, but it seems to put it in the database anyway, with date 0000-00-00.
    Inserting a blank title AND a blank description gives no error message, but I think it should give one here.
    Not inserting an end date gives error message and it put’s it in the database anyway, but it doesn’t show anything in the calendar itself.
    So, I suggest you force users to fill in the title and the start date, then autofill the start date to the end date (so that users don’t have to type it twice). I prefer you get rid of the autofill for the timestamp, but that is my personal preference.
    Last thing: maybe you should work with customisable date formats, or maybe use the date format selected for wordpress itself. But this might be a little more work and I guess you should implement this in v1.3.

  71. Kieran Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

    Thanks for the detailed information, it will help a lot. I’ll be sure to catch these errors in the beta 2.

    I was under the impression that the wp_calendar table was checked for, indeed that is how the plugin determines if it has been installed or not. What would mess this logic up though is if the wp_calendar table existed but only because something else had created one with the same name (I assume this was the case with you). In this case, the check would pass but the save would fail because the columns would be different to what was expected. I can’t see as there is much I can do about this though, short of changing the name of the calendar tables which would probably create more problems for those upgrading than it would solve.

  72. ted Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 7:33 pm

    Kieran,

    I love this plugin… I am having several “issues” not really problems…

    1. The hover state that displays the details of the post works great in FF but IE 7+ the calnk span title in the calendar is z-indexed higher than the background in the hover state for the calnk… Any suggestions?

    2. Displaying the next X days of upcoming events aren’t displayed…

    I am using WordPress 2.5 php5…

    Please advise,
    Thanks,
    Ted

  73. Kieran Said,

    May 13, 2008 @ 8:39 pm

    ted, the z-indexing issue, you have access to the CSS in the calendar config page, feel free to tweak if it doesn’t work to your liking – thats what its there for πŸ™‚

    As to your next X events issue, I’m not sure what you mean, it really should work (many people have had it working) if:

    1. You have events in the future
    2. The number of days into the future encompasses those future events
    3. You have added the widget to your sidebar
    4. You have enabled upcoming events in your calendar options page

  74. Martin Said,

    May 17, 2008 @ 1:04 pm

    Hey Kieran,

    I don’t know whether this was one of the css issues, but I’m telling you anyway. When there are 2 events next to eachother, and I hover 1 of them, the other one is seen through the hover. If you get what i mean.
    I made a printscreen of it, click my name above to see it.

    Regards.

  75. Martin Said,

    May 17, 2008 @ 1:05 pm

    Oh yeah and I’d like you to fix the width’s of the table, so that all days are equally long.
    (something inside me this was very poor English, but I don’t know how to put it in an other way)

  76. Kieran Said,

    May 17, 2008 @ 2:30 pm

    Martin,

    The different width days has to do with your long event names. The CSS is actually correctly set to have equal day widths.

    Yes, your other issue is a CSS one, one that only occurs in IE7. I have been unable to fix it because the CSS is already standard – its just that IE isn’t responding to it. This is only going to be fixed if someone provides one.

  77. Martin Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 9:55 am

    YAY! I did it!

    If you remove these lines, the css ‘error’ in IE7 is fixed. It has to be checked for other browsers, as they are not installed at this laptop.


    span.calnk a:hover {
    text-decoration:none;
    color:#000000;
    border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;
    }
    span.calnk {
    position:relative;
    }

  78. Martin Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 10:06 am

    Check it at my website, use above link (click my name).

  79. Kieran Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 10:49 am

    I’ve tested this fix on IE7 and Firefox and found it to work fine. The second beta will have the revised CSS as the default.

    Many thanks for your contribution πŸ™‚

  80. Martin Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 11:13 am

    Hey Kieran,

    It seems that only the follwing code needs to be deleted:

    span.calnk {
    position:relative;
    }

    This way, the position of the popup box isn’t determined by the position of your mouse, but it is determined by the position of the text. I don’t exactly know why it fixes it, but it does :-)!

    But I wonder why there are empty lines between my description… readding this code doesn’t fix it, so it must have been like this before I deleted this code…

  81. Kieran Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 1:38 pm

    I don’t exactly know why it fixes it, but it does

    Yeah see you’ve hit the nail on the head there. The original code was fine according to the standards. Microsoft always see fit to screw things up somehow.

    I have to say I see no difference in how it renders with respect to mouse position with either code configuration. I’m tempted to leave out both blocks seeing as the neither of them seem to visually do anything (positive) in either IE7 or Firefox.

    I kind of see what you mean about your “empty lines”, but I think thats something to do with your theme/font. There is nothing in the calendar HTML or CSS that would do this, and it doesn’t seem to look like that on my test site, although anything looks like anything else if you look at it too long.

  82. Kieran Said,

    May 21, 2008 @ 2:21 pm

    As a further report I found that if your replace the lines you suggested, repeated again here:

    span.calnk a:hover {
    text-decoration:none;
    color:#000000;
    border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;
    }
    span.calnk {
    position:relative;
    }

    With these lines:

    .calnk a:hover {
    background-position:0 0;
    text-decoration:none;
    color:#000000;
    border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;
    }
    .calnk a:visited {
    text-decoration:none;
    color:#000000;
    border-bottom:1px dotted #000000;
    }

    Then not only does the IE7 issue of text being visible though the hover go away, but so does the issue of IE6 not showing the hover at all.

  83. Niraj Said,

    May 23, 2008 @ 12:57 am

    Hey !

    That sounds like good news, for comment #70290, it now works for IE 6 ?

    But it does not work, I tried IE 6 on your calendar (via the sidebar on this page).

    Possibly you have not yet updated that one with the new CSS?

    Also, please let us know when the download has the updates also.

    Thanks!

  84. Kieran Said,

    May 23, 2008 @ 4:09 am

    You can see it working on IE6 in the beta version which is being demoed on my development server:
    http://lara.kieranoshea.com/wp_cal

  85. beardedknight Said,

    May 26, 2008 @ 7:31 am

    Kieran,

    Great plugin. I have been beta testing the new version and it works great! Only problem I had was that the plugin would display its CSS on every page. Unfortunately, the design I have can’t support this, so I modified a function in your plugin to make it only add CSS on the calendar page and no where else.

    Here it is:


    // Function to add the calendar style into the header
    function calendar_wp_head()
    {
    global $wpdb;
    global $wp_query;
    $content = $wp_query->post->post_content;

    // If the calendar isn't installed or upgraded this won't work
    check_calendar();

    if (preg_match('{CALENDAR}',$content))
    {
    $styles = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT config_value FROM " . WP_CALENDAR_CONFIG_TABLE . " WHERE config_item='calendar_style'");

    if (!empty($styles))
    {
    foreach ($styles as $style)
    {
    echo 'config_value.'';
    echo '//-->';
    }
    }
    }
    }

    Hope this will help you on development for 1.3.

  86. beardedknight Said,

    May 26, 2008 @ 8:09 am

    Forgot to add another typo I found in the source in function edit_calendar_config(), $subscriber_selected is spelled as $subscriber_seletced.

    HTH again.

  87. Kieran Said,

    May 26, 2008 @ 9:29 am

    Good catch on the variable name there, thanks πŸ™‚

    As for the style issue, given that the code places the style in the header, why would a specific theme not be able to support that? The header isn’t printed to screen? Is there a CSS conflict between some of the WordPress names used in themes? If so I should address those as well….

  88. beardedknight Said,

    May 26, 2008 @ 1:43 pm

    In my particular case, I created a calendar that occupies the entire page and hides the sidebar. Unfortunately, if I put the CSS to hide the sidebar inside this calendar’s CSS box, it hides my sidebar on every single page. Modification is the only way I can get more flexibility in designing my calendar page.

    I haven’t tested performance wise if the time cost of performing the preg_match is better than downloading more CSS on every web page, but I’m sure it’s comparable.

    As far as I know, there are no conflicts between other WordPress names in other themes, this was purely for performance and customizabilty reasons.

    Thanks and keep up the good work.

  89. Kieran Said,

    May 27, 2008 @ 4:41 pm

    Ah right, makes sense. Thanks for the help with the testing πŸ™‚

  90. Theron Said,

    May 28, 2008 @ 8:26 pm

    Hey Kieran,

    I was wondering if i could make a request.
    I noticed in the the calendar.php you commented:

    // All this style info will go into the database on a new install
    // This looks nice in the Kubrick theme

    I was actually wondering if you could leave it out of the database as i don’t know about you but i like to edit my stuff in an external editor. I NEVER use the built in theme editor for wordpress because it has no undo’s amongst a tone of other abilities that an external editor has. Not to mention external editor give you more screen real estate to edit so you can see what you doing.

    Thanks man keep it up.

  91. Kieran Said,

    May 28, 2008 @ 9:11 pm

    Theron, there is a very good reason why I have begun placing the style in the database with this version and feel that not having it there is a problem.

    Version 1.1 presented two main support requests to me that consumed large quantities of my time;

    1. The .htaccess issues
    2. “How do I make the Calendar fit my style?”

    Literally hours upon hours of my time must have been consumed answering such e-mails and so in version 1.2 I addressed these issues as follows;

    1. Removed pretty links and wrote a permalink function that would work with standard URL arguments on any link structure. This will reduce time spent on supporting .htaccess which, in hindsight, I should have realised required too much technical knowledge for many novice WordPress users.

    2. Placed Calendar into a WordPress page (to get the layout broadly correct and user theme dependent), and place the CSS for Calendar into the database and wrote a function that would pull it out and load it into the header of the rendered pages. This allowed any style issues to be easily fixable for the users and for me to be able to assist most users in seconds rather than minutes at a time.

    Freeing up this time is important for both personal reasons and for the future development of Calendar. I feel certain that users would rather see more features from Calendar than e-mails from me.

    Clearly neither decision 1 or 2 precludes EXPERTS like yourself from re-instating pretty links or moving the style from the database to the theme CSS if they so wish. It just means that those doing so cannot expect and will not receive support from me because they will need to modify the plugin code.

    I hope this helps πŸ™‚

  92. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 6:03 pm

    So I feel really stupid, but I really cannot see where to add a tag to a page…

  93. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 6:24 pm

    Ok, I figured it out… but it’s kind of confusing, since posts have an actual form field called ‘tags’

  94. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 6:36 pm

    A couple other issues with the readme… it mentions uploading or deleting files, but there is really only one file, the readme and screenshots don’t need to be uploaded, so it made me think I was missing something. Also the calendar files refers you to the readme if you want to delete the credit line at the bottom, but there is nothing in the readme about that. Of course I guess these aren’t really bugs…

    One issue I do see on the calendar is that if I have an event on the very right (Saturday for me), when I do the pop up hover, it hides half of it offscreen and makes a scroll bar, expanding the page. Is there a way to deal with that?

    Thanks for everything! It does look great πŸ™‚

  95. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 6:40 pm

    Ok one last thing…. I just logged in as my test subscriber, and that user is able to delete events that my admin user added. I definitely don’t think anyone else should be able to delete events except maybe their own. Is this expected behavior?

  96. Kieran Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 6:48 pm

    You need to upload the directory, which is what it means by files. While only one file may be needed in the beta version, this may not be the case in the future. The readme takes this into account. Deleting files refers to upgrading. You do need to delete the old calendar files if an upgrade is being carried out.

    The readme does indicate that you are at liberty to remove the credit line. It doesn’t tell you how because it involves code edits and making a mistake would break the whole plugin. If I detail how to do it, it implies providing support if people follow the instructions incorrectly and end up breaking the plugin which I don’t have time to deal with.

    The expanding page sounds like a style issue. There is a CSS box on the calendar config page, you might have some luck fixing the issue there. Without knowing your browser, theme and screen resolution I couldn’t possibly suggest any solutions. For the record I don’t see that issue in IE6, IE7 Firefox or Opera on the Kubrick theme.

  97. Kieran Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 10:01 pm

    Mindy, you’re posting comments so fast! lol

    Yes, this behavior is expected. You select the minimum group level that can “manage events”. Manage events implies adding, editing and deleting any and all events. If you don’t want people in the group doing this then you should either raise the allowed level to a higher group or move the user(s) in question to another group. There is no distinction between an event created by an admin or another allowed user. They are just events with authors. Those who you allow to manage them can do so in every sense of the word.

  98. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 10:07 pm

    Thank you!! πŸ™‚

  99. Mindy Said,

    May 29, 2008 @ 10:10 pm

    So where do I add my feature request for people to be able to add events but not “manage events”? πŸ˜‰

  100. Jason Schramm Said,

    June 8, 2008 @ 1:25 pm

    Upcoming Events widget fix:

    I noticed you acknowledged this bug a month ago. Not sure if you fixed it, but it was pretty easy to fix.

    widget_init_calendar_upcoming() just had an extra header tag. What I did was moved the widget title there and removed it from upcoming_events(). Makes it cleaner.

  101. Jason Schramm Said,

    June 8, 2008 @ 1:33 pm

    1. Why is the Event Title limited to a certain number of letters?

    2. Can we have an event recur on the first Friday of every month?

  102. Jason Schramm Said,

    June 8, 2008 @ 1:46 pm

    More changes I have made:

    1. Added a check before the Today’s Events widget code is output to check if the output of todays_events() was empty. If so, there’s no need to write out any of the widget code, so instead of a “Todays Evens” header with no content in the box below it just doesn’t show up. Cleaner. Makes more sense (to me at least).

    2. Changed time formatting in display. Wanted it in 12 hour format, with am or pm. With this format you could have time output in any way you want.
    changed: $hour.’:’.$minute
    to: date(“g:i a”,$time)

  103. Jason Schramm Said,

    June 8, 2008 @ 1:55 pm

    Updated to #2 above:

    Date format I created wasn’t working right. Can’t do it with the $time variable.
    Need the following instead:
    date(“g:i a”,mktime($hour, $minute, 0))

  104. Kieran Said,

    June 8, 2008 @ 2:37 pm

    First of all, this is not a request thread so having extra recurring events is not possible in this release. The number of characters in the event title has always been limited and explained a number of times in past discussions. If it is too long then it will deform the shape of the calendar grid. This is undesirable and so it is limited to a certain number of characters. 30 should be plenty for a title; extra details can be provided in the description field which now supports unlimited characters and will appear on mouse-over.

    The widget code has been fully fixed on my machine, I’m just not finished with other things yet so not ready for release. Its not as simple as you indicate though because in non-widgetised versions of WordPress the upcoming_events() and todays_events() functions need to be called directly and display all the required HTML. I’ve had to do some detection of if widgets exist and then decide what code to output from the functions – support for the legacy WordPress branch is staying.

    The time issue has also been fixed (but again not released yet). It has been done by taking the time format defined in the WordPress settings and formatting the time displayed according to that.

  105. Greg Said,

    June 12, 2008 @ 6:08 pm

    I hate to be the one to ask, but are you any closer to Beta 2, or better yet, the full release? Thanks for all you do!

    Greg

  106. Kieran Said,

    June 13, 2008 @ 12:03 am

    I’ll be honest; I’ve been getting a little side tracked with my celebrations concerning my degree result πŸ˜‰

  107. Justin Sainton Said,

    July 6, 2008 @ 7:20 am

    So, I was searching through all 106 comments to see if anyone had the same issues I did. I found some, but I found the issues to be unresolved. Perhaps others will come across this with my same problems, and my solutions will be helpful. Here’s the problem I was having –

    1. I couldn’t get the hover to look right in any browser. No matter what fix I tried, and I did try the ones above, it still showed up with a funky z-index, putting much of the event behind the calender, when hovered on.

    2. I wanted to experiment with opening the thing a new window. I saw that discussed, and it sounded like it was shot down. I wanted to play with it.

    So, the solution I came up with can be seen at zaowebdesign.com/stmpdx. I’m pretty happy with it, in all honesty. With my mods to this, I can now say that I have no apprehensions about using this calendar exclusively with my projects. Thanks for all the good work Kieran!

  108. Kieran Said,

    July 6, 2008 @ 1:13 pm

    The hover issue in all browsers has been fixed, I just haven’t got around to making another release yet.

    Just taken a look at your modifications with the pop up. It looks nice. The only issue I have is that in doing this you have also removed the summary view of events, with the only indication that a day has any events being a clickable link on the day. I’m sure this is exactly what you want but I can’t see it being everyones cup of tea – was there a particular reason for doing this?

  109. Justin Sainton Said,

    July 6, 2008 @ 3:54 pm

    I’m not 100% sure I know what you mean by the summary view? Previously, the only thing indicating an event was an asterisk, whereas now it’s a link, I don’t see any other distinction.

  110. Kieran Said,

    July 7, 2008 @ 12:55 am

    There was the title of the event as well?

  111. Justin Sainton Said,

    July 7, 2008 @ 1:16 am

    Oh right, good call, I must have modded that out much earlier on. It makes a lot of sense in the context of your development server, inside the post and all. In my client’s context, though, I think the way it is makes more sense in the layout.

    I could definitely see justification for making that an option in the admin panel, shoot, even making the thickbox application as a whole an option. I really like the calendar, I’m glad you coded it in such a way to promote modification, that’s always a good sign πŸ˜€

  112. Greg Said,

    July 17, 2008 @ 4:07 am

    I just updated to WordPress 2.6 and now I’m getting an error when I try to add events.

    Looks like this: Error: For some bizare reason your event was not added. Why not try again?

    Any ideas?

  113. Kieran Said,

    July 22, 2008 @ 10:30 pm

    Greg is this with the beta?

  114. Kieran Said,

    August 7, 2008 @ 10:08 am

    Just to let all beta testers know that the release candidate is now available. Subject to no bugs being found or any discovered bugs being fixed, the release candidate will become the final version.

    You can read about and download it here.

  115. Kieran Said,

    May 30, 2009 @ 2:36 pm

    Calendar 1.2.2 has now been released.

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