Porting QML Weekly Planner to Windows Phone

Changes to design

QML Weekly Planner is an example application demonstrating the creation and use of custom UI components. Because QML is just an environment for creating user interfaces, it alone does not declare any user interface guidelines. This is apparent in QML Weekly Planner where the look and feel of created custom UI components does not follow the guidelines of any specific platform. The Windows Phone environment, on the other hand, includes some guidelines on how the applications should look to maintain the look and feel and keep a 3rd party application consistent with the platform. For this reason, it was seen necessary to make modifications to the design of the Windows Phone version of Weekly Planner. The changes were based on both the general guidelines of the Windows Phone platform and the native Calendar application of Windows Phone.

Changes to event management

The most notable change compared to the QML version is how the user is able to manipulate events.

In the QML version, the user is able to create events, enter the description of an event, and manipulate the starting time and duration of the event in the main view of the application. In fact, the main view of the application is the ONLY view in the application. This approach results in a large number of buttons whose functionality might not be apparent to the user. For example, directly removing an event is not possible: the user needs to merge an 'unallocated time slot' to the event and then use the 'Split' button. Also, the buttons used to manipulate events are embedded into the 'event grid' of the application which forces the time slots for each hour to be relatively large in size.

Windows Phone guidelines favour simplicity, so it was decided that the manipulation of events should happen in a similar manner as in Windows Phone's native Calendar application. A new UI view was designed that allows the user to input the starting time, ending time, and description of a new event. The user can also use the same view to modify an existing event.

Another new UI view was added in order to make the modifying and removing of an event more logical. This view shows the details of an event in a similar manner as in the Calendar application and also includes buttons for editing and removing the event. Editing and removing are also accessible through the context menu that opens when the user long-taps the event in the main view.

Event merging and splitting features available in the QML version were dropped from the Windows Phone version as it was evaluated that they bring no additional value to the user.

Overlapping events

Creating events that overlap is not possible in the QML version due to the characteristics of the event management approach used. In Windows Phone, overlapping events are possible and are handled the same way as in the Calendar application.