Visual improvement suggestions

[artfulrobot]

Thanks for the software!

I think the following would make it even better

• align numbers centre of columns so they align with day names
• really highlight today, e.g. a circle around it. The bold is not immediately enough and the muted colour difference amongst all the other mutes colours is not enough - IMO.
• font-size option (there's space for larger numbers) - I like this widget for it's ability to provide an at a glance calendar view, this will be more useful with larger numbers.

Thanks again!

[mvmike]

Hi @artfulrobot,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions, it's always refreshing to get an external view and feedback 🙂

Regarding the points you raised:

• align numbers centre of columns so they align with day names → tried this in the past, but then the alignment with the symbols became tricky and it was not as clean as it's now. Will give it another try to see if I can find something that does not break the alignment
• really highlight today, e.g. a circle around it. The bold is not immediately enough and the muted colour difference amongst all the other mutes colours is not enough - IMO. → interesting, never though it was not clear enough. Honestly, not sure if I know how to add a circle around the cell (my FE skills suck 😂 ), but maybe playing with the border could also have the same effect and it seems easier to do
• font-size option (there's space for larger numbers) - I like this widget for it's ability to provide an at a glance calendar view, this will be more useful with larger numbers. → agree that it could be configurable. As of now, font size correlates with the widget size but there are scenarios in which the user would benefit from overriding this manually

Will add some proposal here once I have something

[artfulrobot]

Hey @mvmike thanks for the response! And the widget ;-)

Afraid I can't offer to help with code as I've never done anything with Android. Many thanks for your time and thoughts.

[mvmike]

text size is configurable starting latest v2.10.0 release

[mvmike]

regarding alignment, best results i could get are these:

problem being that symbols have different sizes and there is no easy way of centering the content of the cell without having small inconsistencies (e.g. in the image days 12 and 19 are not properly aligned vertically)

[artfulrobot]

Looks much nicer to me already! :+1:

[mvmike]

After playing with it for a bit, found a way to center the day cell content whilst keeping the day of month text vertically aligned

Seeing it now properly aligned, agree it looks better than current release version as you initially suggested 😃

[mvmike]

changes in alignment available on v2.11.0 release

[skoshy]

Alignment still appears strange for me. Notice none of the numbers align with the day of the week. (you can very clearly tell from today's date, the 13th)

I have Symbols set to None, and this is on version 2.12.4.

[mvmike]

I see what you're saying, @skoshy, the idea behind current alignment is that when there are symbols present then it looks better as it can be seen in app screenshots.

Would it make sense that when Symbols is set to None then the days of the month are fully centered as days of the week are on top?

[mvmike]

Played a bit with days alignment when there are no symbols present (either because of the symbol set to None, no calendar read permissions or simply no events in the visible weeks) so they are completely in the center of the cell, it's available under v2.12.5

[skoshy]

Thank you very much @mvmike ! This looks great now!

[vladandersb]

On my phone fonts are very tiny and its difficult to see current day without taking few seconds to look around for it. Is it possible to add some options to make current day stand out more? Maybe add a circle or square around it.

[mvmike]

Thanks for raising the topic @vladandersb and @WoAnerges, once I have some spare time I'll suggest some options here to better reflect current day so we can find a way to close the latest open topic from those reported by @artfulrobot

[artfulrobot]

Thanks everyone for great work on this! Appreciated!

[mvmike]

What would you think about keeping the same colour palette for the background and simply changing the colour of today's text? It would look as the following:

• Low transparency

• High transparency (as @WoAnerges shared in #206)

Also played a bit with the other suggestion of adding a circle in the back of the number whilst keeping a dynamic transparency but it's a bit tricky, although I can investigate further in the future

[vladandersb]

That works for me but I would add an option to change color and without a dot.

[mvmike]

That works for me but I would add an option to change color and without a dot.

The dot is a calendar instance, added it to reflect that the day of month would have the same colour as the instances symbol for the current day.

The alternative would be to have some sort of border as the following:

But IMO it breaks current widget aesthetics (which don't have any border/line)

Unless there isn't a better option, I'll move forward with the day of month number in red approach

[vladandersb]

There is circle, under line or background, so it would look like in its own square with different background. Probably anything would work as long as current day stands out.

Also I would make whole current week stand out too but its different feature? Just change background of each day of current week to slightly lighter or darker color...

[mvmike]

There is circle, under line or background, so it would look like in its own square with different background. Probably anything would work as long as current day stands out.

Understood that current day highlight it's not enough, but I'd really like to avoid something as drastic as those suggestions since IMO they break a bit the current widget aesthetics.

Also I would make whole current week stand out too but its different feature? Just change background of each day of current week to slightly lighter or darker color...

Haven't seen anything similar in any calendar... maybe you'd like a weekly view? It's on the roadmap under https://github.com/mvmike/min-cal-widget/issues/60

[mvmike]

Updated current day highlight under beef6f22376840cf079dcb9a5098ba5b5cfaedea, will be available in v2.14.0

Closing the issue since it was the last topic raised by @artfulrobot, thanks all for your contribution ❤️

[artfulrobot]

Just wanted to say thanks all for the improvements! It's much clearer to me now.