
The new Google Calendar for web - Navarr
https://www.blog.google/products/g-suite/time-refresh-introducing-new-look-and-features-google-calendar-web/
======
stinky613
It's amazing how my gut reactions to Google announcements have changed over
the years.

Ten years ago: "Google released a new upgrade to X? Sweet! I wonder what cool
stuff they added!"

Today: "Google released a new upgrade to X? Ugh. I wonder what
features/workflows they broke or removed."

Am I just a cynical jerk, or do other people feel this way too?

~~~
euyyn
I'm biased here, but after Inbox, and after the mobile Calendar apps being
upgraded, I was super excited about the web Calendar upgrade. I love it.

~~~
stinky613
I like Inbox, and I use it...but have you noticed that, stunningly, you can
search for things in Inbox and get zero results and then take that same search
into _gmail_ and get results??

(Unfortunately, no, I don't have an example I can demonstrate
extemporaneously)

~~~
kbenson
Inbox doesn't search hangouts conversations, which is a _huge_ annoyance for
me. You can load gmail and search and get those results, so it's annoying that
you can't get it in Inbox. Other than that, I really prefer Inbox.

~~~
stinky613
Isn't it kind of crazy that gmail is the ONLY place you can search Hangouts
chat history??

~~~
applecrazy
I didn’t even know that was a thing until today, and I’ve been using Gmail for
a decade.

------
AlphaWeaver
To force this update to Calendar without it being rolled out to you yet, you
can use this query string parameter:

[https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?new_calendar_opt...](https://calendar.google.com/calendar/render?new_calendar_optin=true)

EDIT: Apparently it might not save the preference, so you'd need to use this
link every time.

~~~
om42
Doesn't seem to work on GSuite

~~~
sjs382
In GSuite your admin can control the timing of the update. If you're the
admin, see the setting here:
[https://admin.google.com/AdminHome#AppDetails:service=Calend...](https://admin.google.com/AdminHome#AppDetails:service=Calendar&flyout=newCalendar)

------
pbh101
Am I just missing it, or did they get rid of the 'Quick Add' natural language
parsing option (e.g. "Meeting with Fred tomorrow at 5p")? That has easily been
the most valuable feature of Google Calendar since day one.

~~~
nsriv
Good catch, I left feedback on this. Pressing "c" as a keyboard shortcut
allows for the create event screen to be brought up, but it's no substitute.

~~~
pbh101
Pressing 'q' still 'works,' but doesn't actually interpret the data you input,
and instead just makes an event at the current time and day. Also left
feedback.

------
SubiculumCode
I wish calendars would come with booking ability. If I want to schedule a
conference room, a laptop, the company car, and the spare parking permit (for
example), I have to go to four separate calendars. I'd rather be able to
schedule an event and assign resources to it.

I've used Rapla ([http://rapla.org/](http://rapla.org/)) for this in my lab,
and it worked nicely. You schedule an event, it lets you know what resources
are available for that timeslot.

~~~
pjschlic
Is the process of adding 'rooms' which are actually arbitrary 'things' (like
your laptop, company car, or spare parking permit which is picked up from
reception) in calendar not a viable hack for some reason? I imagine this can
scale to whatever you want to reserve.

~~~
SubiculumCode
I meant I wish Google Calendar would have a resource reservation system. Rapla
allows resources to be scheduled. You cando this in Google Calendar only by
separately making events for each resource's calendar.

------
ashark
If it's as slow and RAM-hungry as newer versions of Gmail I'll be looking for
the "basic HTML" equivalent for it ASAP.

~~~
frenchie4111
Is gmail RAM-hungry due to styling?

~~~
bzbarsky
Mostly due to JavaScript, though styling can be a problem too; the gmail
stylesheets have a huge number of rules (over 10,000), with a fair amount of
duplication in them. For example, gmail has about 4600 rules that all set a
background-image of
"//ssl.gstatic.com/chat/emoji/png28-7f9d3a5045813584f828fe69a1fecb77.png"
according to
<[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1397971#c0>](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1397971#c0>).
You can see some data on the styling end in
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1392314](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1392314)
and its dependencies.

Anyway, I just tried loading gmail in Firefox, pulling up about:memory, and
measuring. The overall gmail window takes about 125MB of RAM over here, not
counting its images. Style data is about 27MB of that. Another 11.5MB is DOM
(6MB of textnodes). Most of the rest is JavaScript.

And _boy_ is there a lot of JavaScript. I'm seeing a 15MB arraybuffer from a
hangouts iframe (why is that there by default on gmail? I've never used
hangouts!). 2MB of just Function objects on gmail itself, out of 10MB total
for JS bits. 8MB of objects/functions/arrays for _another_ hangouts iframe.
4MB of JS stuff for a notifications.google.com iframe.

Note that a lot of the style and DOM bits above were _also_ for the hangouts
iframes. Just eyeballing it, about half the memory gmail is using over here is
actually for those hangouts iframes...

Oh, and none of that includes the strings. There's 10MB of strings, including
at least three more or less identical-looking strings with nearly 1 million
characters each that look like stylesheet text. And then another
500k-character stylesheet-text string.... And yes, I just forced a full GC and
those strings are still there; gmail is keeping them around somehow.

~~~
nitrogen
_has about 4600 rules that all set a background-image of
"//ssl.gstatic.com/chat/emoji/png28-..._

Is that possibly a sprite sheet with different background position for each
rule?

~~~
bzbarsky
Ah, good catch. Yes, it is. See
[https://ssl.gstatic.com/chat/emoji/png28-7f9d3a5045813584f82...](https://ssl.gstatic.com/chat/emoji/png28-7f9d3a5045813584f828fe69a1fecb77.png)

It could probably specify the background image only once in a rule that
matches all the relevant things and then specify the background positions
separately. Sure would be more efficient without the browser having to jump
through hoops to deduplicate the url.

------
hodgesmr
I really hope this will let me manage multiple calendars the way the app does…
just be signed in to all of them... don’t make me "share" them with each
other.

------
bitsoda
Seems like they got rid of their intelligent time parsing. In the old Calendar
I could type "Walk dog 7p" and it would create a "Walk dog" event at 7pm. Now
it just creates an all-day event with the text "Walk dog 7p". Feedback sent.

~~~
IshKebab
Maybe try "pm"? "7p" isn't a time.

~~~
bitsoda
7p is just shorthand. Either way, it doesn't work for 7p or 7pm whereas it
used to for either format.

------
Upvoter33
I just want to be able to easily schedule a 15 or 45 minute long meeting :P

~~~
dghughes
I just want to easily create a repeating schedule for an odd number pattern
e.g. every second Wednesday or every third Wednesday.

Microsoft Outlook is easier although the Outlook application is easier than
the Office.com calendar.

~~~
lazyasciiart
I want an appointment that recurs on the 5th Saturday of every month. If
anyone knows how to do that in google calendar let me know!

------
moonka
Like the new look quite a bit. I wish they would add a way to jump to dates
though. I've been using Google calendar for several years now, and sometimes i
want to look back a few years. Right now I have to click 20-30-40 times on the
month arrow.

ETA: Looks like google labs is totally gone from the new setup?

~~~
davidcbc
If you change the view to Year in the top right you can go back years at a
time and then switch back to a more granular view

~~~
moonka
That's huge, thank you!

------
guiomie
Seems like material design eye candy. Any ways to take a screen shot of your
google calendar while hiding the titles? To share with external people to
schedule meetings.

~~~
ggambetta
The fact that you want to share a screenshot of a web app to share with other
people suggests that some workflows are broken and some features are missing
:(

~~~
guiomie
I believe the only way right now is to make the calendar public/shareable,
while enabling the option to hide the event details. I do not want my calendar
link public, I only want to show a defined timeframe snapshot. So yah, I think
you are right.

~~~
halflings
Your calendar link will not be public, you only give access to one person and
can hide all of the events' details. If that's still too much and you want to
only share availability for one week, maybe you can use appointment slots?

~~~
SubiculumCode
If I want to share today's schedule with someone, but do not want them to see
my schedule tomorrow, what is my option? Screenshot.

------
dmd
This is awful. In the current UI, my appointment says "Open House". In the new
UI, in compact mode, it says "Open". In responsive mode, it says "Op".

------
pbarnes_1
The problem with this (and Inbox) is that material design just doesn't
translate to a big web browser canvas with a mouse etc.

It just feels... bad.

~~~
Nothorized
I seconding you on that. The material design (MD) seems to be empty of my
computer. I think Google right now is confusing the ability to read a website
with a smartphone, and the ability to read a website with a computer. Sure, MD
looks great on my phone, but I also love to use Google products on my computer
(and I use them mostly on my computer).

------
CommanderData
Nice to see an improved UI. But it feels almost identical to Outlook calendars
in layout, something I have been using for years.

------
sjs382
If you use GSuite, your admin can control the timing of this update. If you're
the admin, you can change the setting here:
[https://admin.google.com/AdminHome#AppDetails:service=Calend...](https://admin.google.com/AdminHome#AppDetails:service=Calendar&flyout=newCalendar)

------
harigov
I hope this makes it easy to create/edit events without going back and forth
between calendar view and event view, especially when you have additional
details to add (like location). The current version of Google Calendar for the
web is so outdated in terms of the functionality it offers and the way it
looks.

------
theseanstewart
Does anyone know why it's not possible to change the calendar for a given
event in the Google Calendar iOS app? You can change the color of an event,
but not the actual calendar the event is associated with. It drives me crazy.
You have to delete the event and re-create it under the correct calendar.

~~~
easyroot
This is the same on the native Android app. No way to change a calendar for an
event once added - have to pop over to a browser. Pretty annoying.

~~~
timlin
Allow me to recommend aCalendar+. All the features you need.

------
stephengillie
Can the Google Calendar Android App get notifications that are independent of
the Google Launcher App? Launcher isn't allowed to send notifications because
it sends too many irrelevant notifications, but this also means no calendar
reminders anymore.

~~~
Grazester
Launcher is sending you irrelevant notifications about what? Launcher isn't
sending you anything it's something else(so turn that off) and you dont need
Google's launcher to get calendar notifications and the mere fact that you are
asking this says you are confused.

~~~
stephengillie
Maps nagging me to confirm I was at specific locations at specific times, news
articles I don't want to read, etc. Just now I re-enabled Launcher
notifications, and it's notifying me that I can unlock my phone by saying "OK
Google". This is common knowledge and not a notification I want or can use,
but have no way to disable this irrelevance.

Google calendar funnels notifications through the Google App, just like all
Google apps, at least on my device.

~~~
Grazester
You could turn off those things and you dont need the default Google launcher
to get notification(from Google app or whatever). I am here looking at a
calendar reminder on my phone and I dont use the Google launcher.

To turn of those location questions open Google
Maps->Settings->Notification->Your contributions. Toggle what you want and
dont want to be notified about.

People seem to complain about this and not realise for some reason that it
could be turned off without having to resort to something as crude as blocking
the notification.

~~~
stephengillie
How do I get rid of the notifications telling me that I can unlock my phone by
saying "OK Google"?

Do your calendar notifications come from Google Calendar? Mine don't, and I
don't know why.

It's not readily apparent how to disable most of these, so the whole
notification is disabled. It's a UI deficiency that could be argued to be a
dark pattern.

------
stillatlarge
I would love it if Google Calendar notified you when you accepted multiple
invites for the same date & time. It boggles my mind that this wasn't a
feature from the start.

------
swypych
Google Calendar PM, please add the ability to add meeting room links to the
little pop-up, rather then just the dynamically created ones from
meet.google.com.

~~~
illicium
Assuming you have G Suite, create a calendar resource for the room, then add
the room to the invite.

[https://support.google.com/a/answer/1686462?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1686462?hl=en)

------
federicoponzi
It's 2017 - quite 2018- and still can't set notifications for birthdays of my
contacts lol please fix broken features before releasing redesign

------
SubiculumCode
The update doesn't seem to be rolled out to me yet.

~~~
joombaga
It's on the G Suite blog, so I'm guessing it's for G Suite users first/only at
this point.

~~~
olyjohn
Except the article says: "And if you use Calendar for personal use, click “Use
new Calendar” in the upper righthand corner of the main Calendar view to get
started."

Went to my calendar, and this isn't there at all. And will I get the option to
go back, or is the old calendar dead?

~~~
joombaga
It's there now, and yeah, there is an option to switch back (for now) under
the gear menu.

------
SubiculumCode
Not a fan of the white text on colored background. I prefer black text on the
colored event

~~~
duality
Click the "gear" button and open up the "Density and Color" menu. You'll have
the option to use the classic color set, which is black font on the colored
event boxes.

------
SubiculumCode
Another wish of mine for google calendar is to turn on a confirm move
dialogue. It is too easy to move an event accidentally, and because all the
time documentation in the event gets updated, I lose the actual time of the
event. I've taken to embedding the date and time into text describing the
event. PIA

------
lousken
After youtube got a dark theme I had hope for more... guess not.

------
wingliu0
wht framework is it using?

------
theossuary
Completely off topic, but am I the only won who things it's really wrong for
google to have their own TLD?

~~~
oxguy3
I don't mind it. Be glad that ICANN didn't allow their proposal to own the
name "search", with no second-level domain (i.e.
[https://search/](https://search/)):
[https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/10/google-wants-to-operate-
se...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/10/google-wants-to-operate-search-as-a-
dotless-domain/)

