Windows 8 Calendar app (free download) : Everything you need to know

 Windows 8 Calendar app

At its heart, a great calendar should to do the following:

•Show your life clearly. You should have crystal clear visibility into what’s happening in your life – at home, at work, and at school.

•Make it easy to get around. Moving back and forth in time should be quick and efficient. Opening events and appointments should feel natural.

 •Make it easy to add new items. New things are always coming up in your life. A great calendar makes it easy to make new plans.

 •Keep you on time. Well laid plans aren’t very useful if you show up late!

 •Be ready to do more. As you get busier, scheduling gets more complicated. Calendar should gracefully handle your needs as they change.

Showing your life clearly

One of the most important functions of a calendar is its ability to answer the questions “What’s going on for me today?” and “What’s coming up next?” As we designed the Calendar app, we focused on providing that clarity and eliminating distractions. Given all the potential capabilities of a digital calendar, keeping this focus can actually be quite difficult. The temptation to add extra bells and whistles can be very real. At the same time, we realized that focus is one thing paper calendars have always been quite good at --- they simply present you with the calendar grid and the information you’ve written on it.

 With that insight and the clear principles of what it means to be a great Metro style app, we committed to clarity of presentation. The app focuses on the calendar and your content, above all else.

Of course, having an easy-to-read calendar is only useful if all your information is available. Whether you’re keeping track of appointments at work, managing family activities, or mapping out your class schedule at school, Calendar brings everything together to provide a more complete picture of your life.





Week view

As you’d expect, Week view is useful when you have a large volume of appointments, and it’s crafted to give you the clarity you need for a particular week:




Week view lets you see a Sunday to Saturday overview


Two-day view

We also know there are days where you’re extremely busy at work, home, school, or all three. And we wanted a design that would allow even greater focus and precision. At the same time, we didn’t want to zoom in so far as to create “tunnel vision” by removing too much context. To strike the right balance, we designed Calendar with a two-day view:


Two-day view gives you the best detail about today and tomorrow

The two-day view is useful because making good time management decisions today often requires understanding what’s coming up tomorrow. In addition, this view takes advantage of today’s modern wide-screen displays without adding additional chrome or distractions just to fill up the extra space. As with the other views, it’s simply the calendar grid and your events. (And here’s a tip: each day scrolls independently without affecting the adjacent day. So, you can view information about tonight, while keeping an eye on your first appointment tomorrow.)


(Source : Microsoft)