Announcing the Google Calendar Dashboard Widget

I’m stuck at work with my wretched PC, but I will cheerfully download and try out your widget this evening. Thanks very much for creating this.

[Found via your google groups posting.]

Ran Barton — October 24, 2006

Is there anyway you could add a way to quickly add events to the calander?

John — October 26, 2006

OK, I have a question. I’ve installed the widget, flipped it around to enter the feed URL, and I’m ready to flip it back… but I can’t work out how to do that because there’s no ‘done’ button. Am I missing something? Is there another way to flip them back?

Please excuse my ignorance if there’s a really easy way to do this, I only upgraded to Tiger recently…

Thank you!

PS: I’d appreciate it if you could forward your reply to my email.

Sara Goldstein — November 4, 2006

Hey I was wondering if there was anyway to sync my time zones? because it was working perfectly then I had to turn my clock back for day light savings time… so now all of my scheduled events are an hour ahead…. even though they are correct on google calendars…

for example…

google calendar – 11am class
google widget- 10am class

thanks!

Thao — November 7, 2006

Hi Thao,

You should have the system take care of Daylight Savings, i.e. simply indicate to the system that you’re in a region that observes DST. If you manually change your system clock, it’s going to do funny things (not just with the widget, but with other applications too.)

In System Preferences, go to Date/Time, and under Date & Time, check the box labeled “Set data and time automatically”. Then, under Time Zone, select your correct Time Zone. Things should be back to normal after this.

Manas — November 7, 2006

Hi Sara,

I sent a reply to your email as you requested. There should definitely be a ‘Done’ button on the flip-side. I added a screenshot to the download page on my site to illustrate this. If you don’t see the button, can you please send me a screenshot of what you see?

Manas — November 7, 2006

Hey I just installed your google calendar widget. I sorta works except the times are totally wrong. Is that a common problem and do you know how to fix it? Thanks

Adam — November 10, 2006

More specifically everything is 8 hours earlier than it should be (ie. 2pm is 6am).

Adam — November 10, 2006

Great widget. Can I veiw anything other than the current day on the widget? i.e. next day, next week, next year.

Scott — November 11, 2006

I am unable to get events to show up on the widget.
I am pasting the link found in Calendar Address pop up box that I find there after clicking on boxes. Since they are all different I tried HTML, ICAL and XML and none give me info in my Widget view.
I have double checked that the Calendar I choose to get the link from has some appointments in it.
Please advise.

David — November 15, 2006

Same issue with mine, everything is 8 hours earlier, I’m in central time zone and both my comp and google are set for central
Thanks.

Mike — November 15, 2006

Adam and Mike, can you send me your calendar URLs over private email? Since you’ve checked that both, Google Calendar and Mac OS are set to the correct timezone, I’ll need to investigate further.

Scott, my plans for this widget were to keep it very simple; but if a lot of people want events from long into the future to show up, perhaps I might add that in.

David, are you using the Private URLs (XML) link (as opposed to the public one, which might not show events that you marked as private/default)?

Manas — November 16, 2006

Thanks Manas, I found the error, the main settings on my gcal was central, but some of my calendars were set on pacific (I guess it’s google standard and I didn’t know I have to change it for each individual calendar). now it works fine.

Mike — November 17, 2006

Hi Manas,
First of all, thanks for this widget — I had been thinking about creating something similar myself, and you’ve saved me the effort!

I have one small feature request: how hard would it be to have a heading showing the day events take place? For example:

Today
buy milk 10 AM
meet Joe 2 PM

December 1
dinner with Sarah 7 PM

Make sense?

Yoel — November 30, 2006

Hi Manas,
Cool widget, but I’m having the same problem as Adam and Mike were. I wasn’t clear on how Mike got it fixed. My computer, google account, and calender are all set on Pacific Time, but the times listed in the widget are 8 hours earlier. Do we need to have something set to GMT 0:00 time? Thanks!

Erik — December 2, 2006

This is really quite nice — and replicates what I was used to on Google Desktop – with one critical exception

My favorite part of Google Calendar is that it had an “add event” button that made it really simple to add events. It was similar syntax to the google SMS (I think that’s what they used) — so I could just send “lunch with ron 12 thursday” and it would work.

Nabeel — December 2, 2006

It’s very cool, but I think I’m having the timezone problem, too.
I’m in Japan and my Mac and Google calendars are set to GMT+9:00 (Japanese standard time).
It’s 22:20 Dec/7 in Japan and I see on the widget is a schedule at 5:00. The real time of the schedule is tomorrow’s 20:00. So, it is 39 hours earlier than the real schedule!!

Toru — December 7, 2006

My computer, Google account, and calendar are all set on Pacific Time, but the times listed in the widget are 8 hours earlier. Is there any available patch for this? Thanks.

William Ford — December 18, 2006

Can you make this widget for Yahoo Widget Engine also? :)

Thomas — January 15, 2007

is there a way to set the time zone? all of my events show up as 8 hours earlier than they are.

rosie — January 24, 2007

I want the possibility to show the time in 24-hour format. It would also be sweet if clicking on the Google-logo actually took you to Google Calendar.
Just my two wishes/BengtB

bengtb — January 25, 2007

Like David, I’m getting nothing. I tried both the public, “Calendar Address” and the “Private Address” XML addresses and all I get is a blank widget front. And I know I’ve got events within the next 7 days. Is the circular refresh arrow (on lower left) supposed to spin when clicked? ‘Cause it just sits there when I click it. I even rebooted, re-installed & tried again. Still zip.
Running G4 DP 533 w/ OS 10.4.8 on DSL connection.

Admin MMDb — February 16, 2007

No, it’s just to initiate a manual refresh.

If you are a power user, I’d suggest running Console.app, then clicking the circular refresh arrow, and seeing what messages appear in the Console. That would help me debug what’s going on.

Manas — February 16, 2007

Hi Let me join the time zone society. :-) I’m in UK, so the time zone is BST or GMT. I checked tha actual XML file: It looks OK. However, the widget shows the above event as 11pm. It seems that the widget is believing that he is in somewhere GMT+3. It seems also consistent with the post of Eric (Pcific zone, which is GMT-5)

shiraga — February 16, 2007

I have tried 2.01. It still has the same problem. The widget is trying to show the event at GMT+3 time zone. FYI Time zone setting of my system, Google acount, and each calendar items are consistent and set correctly.

Suggestions: It’s better to show explicitly …
(1) the version number in the download link of the widget
(2) release date of the version in the project page

shiraga — February 17, 2007

Hello,

This is just to confirm the timezone problem, but since the way google manages timezone is not satisfactory for my own use, it would be great if this could be a manual setup in the widget and not an automatic one (or at least if there were the possibility to choose between automatic and manual)

Thanks and congratulations !

Lionel — February 17, 2007

Hi Manas-
Kudos on bringing the webtop to my desktop! I just downloaded version 2.0.1, unfortunately, I’m having a time zone problem. Example: 9:00 am meeting in gcal shows up at 1:00 am the same day in the widget. I’ve double checked the time zone setting in both places as well.
Thanks,
Eric

Eric — February 18, 2007

Hi Manas.
I really like this widget. We use Google calendar heavily to schedule time on several flow cytometers. It is nice to take a quick peek at the calendar for the day without launching safari and using a bookmark. I also like the bare-bones information (what widgets are all about!) I have distributed this widget to dozens of my colleagues who use my calendars. However, I too am having the 8-hours-too-early problem listed by others. I did not see a workaround. Is it the DST patch Apple released that is causing this? Perhaps the widget does not reflect those changes properly. Very slick work…congrats!

David Brand — February 24, 2007

My humblest apologies. \Lots of people have access to my calendar, and many fingers cause many problems. SOmeone had changed the timezone on one the three calendars that we have published. It had nothing to do with your most excellent widget’s parsing of the entries, or with its interpretation of the Apple DST patch.
Again, my apologies, and my reiteration of congratulations for a very slick widget.
Cheers!
-David

David Brand — February 26, 2007

Hi, I have a totally blank widget, running on Tiger.

My console log has the following error -

2007-02-28 14:24:34.714 DashboardClient[720] (com.marshplace.widget.google.calendar) undefined: Can’t find variable: AppleVerticalScrollbar (line: 0)

Nowhere to personalise the calendar, no apparent response to a ‘refresh’.

Any suggestions ?

Thx
Alison

Alison Adams — February 28, 2007

Hey all of you who reported the timezone issues (or as someone said, Yo members of the timezone society!), my sincere apologies to all of you.

Thanks for your patience so long, and hopefully, I’ve managed to fix the issue. Timezones turned out to be weirdly complicated, with three different date representations between Google data and the actual widget display.

Hopefully, they’ve been fixed. If not, please send me email or post a comment here, and I’ll take a look again. :) 2.1 is here.

Manas — March 1, 2007

Hi Alison, it seems you aren’t using my widget, but another forked version of it. I suggest you delete the other one, and download the one linked in the post above. (It won’t overwrite the other one, so you’ll have to delete it manually.)

Manas — March 1, 2007

Manas, thanks for advice, it made a difference – on to the next hurdle….
I now get a widget I can ‘turn around’ to enter my XML string, but then it just sits there… doesnt respond, or use the string. No apparent button/other to ‘activate’ it ?

I only just installed 10.4 so maybe its the entire widget setup that is incomplete, rather than your widget, though other widgets have installed okay.

Any further ideas welcome.
Regards,
Alison.

Alison Adams — March 1, 2007

Alison, does it flip back when you click the ‘Done’ button?

Manas — March 1, 2007

What ‘Done button’ ? !

Aha, I just upgraded OS to 10.4.8 and now get a ‘different’ widget – it has a ‘done’ button, and yes it does now flip back.
Unfortunately, it is still blank on the other side…
Will leave this for now, other (restoring data) stuff to sort out first. If I can’t get it to work will come back to this forum.
Thanks for help so far.
Alison.

Alison Adams — March 1, 2007

Hi again,
I have this working now. The thing I hadn’t done correctly wasn’t with the widget, it was the calendar itself – I had set access rights for named people and then just the ‘free/busy’ option for everyone else. When I set the calendar to ‘share everything with everyone’, the widget started to work. I hadn’t really wanted it to be that open to others, but at least my widget works now !
Alison.

Alison Adams — March 13, 2007

I see no replies to blank widget stuff. I am on Leaopard and have downloaded version 3.1 and it is blank, despite the XML on the info side.

I do not want to make my calendars public.

Please advise.

Prisca

priscilla Cushman — August 25, 2008

I’m trying this widget in OS X 10.5.5 and it’s blank for me, too. I see no way to configure it. :( It looks really nice when it does work, though!

Torley — December 2, 2008

I’m having the same problem as David and Admin MMD. Tried XML, ICAL, and HTML adresses but the widget front is totally blank. What was the solution to that issue?

Katie — September 3, 2011

I imagine you are no longer supporting/updating this, but just in case: I just got my 10.8.2 OSX machine and this would have been great! If you’re not doing this anymore, any similar alternatives you know of?

Red — March 12, 2013

Manas Tungare

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