Apple’s iCal application is a personal calendaring system that you can use to manage your schedule and even email invitations to events. It also supports network calendar publishing so that you can share your calendar, or share the calendars of other iCal users.
Depending on the version of Mac OS X you have, iCal may already be installed on your computer inside the Applications folder. If not, you can download it from www.apple.com/ical.
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iCal gets its name from both Apple’s i marketing department and the calendar standard it supports—iCalendar. The iCalendar format can be used to define a series of event objects within a calendar object, and a series of alarms within each event.
By basing iCal on a standard, Apple has opened the door to integration with other common calendaring solutions, and the exchange of information to and from computers running on different operating systems, such as Windows.
On starting iCal, you’ll see a three-paned window, shown in Figure 17.1, that will serve as your workspace while using the application.
The upper-left corner contains the Calendars list. Each calendar you’ve added or subscribed to is displayed here. By default, iCal comes with two Calendars—home and work. You can feel free to delete these or use them. New calendars are added by clicking the “+” button at the bottom left-hand side of the window, or by choosing File, New Calendar (Option-Command-N) from the menu. Calendars can be deleted by highlighting them in the list and pressing the Delete key or by choosing Edit, Delete.
Calendars with a checked check box in front of them are “active” and are displayed in the main calendar view to the right of the calendar list.
Directly beneath the calendar list is a mini-month view. Move through the months using the three icons (up arrow, diamond, and down arrow) to move back, to the current month, or to the next month, respectively. Clicking a date within one of the mini-months changes the main calendar view to that day.
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You can collapse the mini-month view using the divider line between it and the calendar list, or by clicking the calendar icon at the bottom of the iCal window.
Along the bottom of the iCal window are several additional controls. The Day, Week, and Month buttons determine the view style of the main calendar—whether you’re looking at a single Day, Week, or Month. The arrows to either side of these buttons move forward and back to the next appropriate calendar “unit” (Day, Week, or Month).
In the bottom center of the window is a single search field. Typing in this field displays (as you type) a list of events that match the string of characters you’ve entered. Figure 17.2 shows a calendar search in action. The search works only across the calendars currently checked in your calendar list.
Double-click an event that you want to jump to and it is highlighted in the main calendar view pane.
Finally, to the right of the search field are three additional buttons. The first button hides or shows the search results. The second shows or hides a new pane to the right of the main calendar view containing to-do items. The third opens a window drawer containing detailed information about the currently selected event, calendar, or To Do item.
Adding an event is easiest within the Day or Week calendar views. Highlight the calendar that should hold the event, navigate in the main calendar view to the day where you want to create an event, and then click and drag from the start time to the end time. As you drag, the event end time will be displayed near your cursor.
A New Event box is drawn that covers the selected time and, when you release the mouse button, the subject (title) will be highlighted. Start typing immediately to enter a new subject (title), or double-click the event subject to edit it after it has been deselected. Figure 17.3 shows a day view with a new event (Meeting with Anne) added.
After an event is added, it can be dragged between different time slots, or days. The event duration can be changed by putting the cursor over the bottom or top edge of the event block and dragging it to resize the box. You can also add new events using File, New Event from the menu (Command-N). This creates a new 1-hour event starting at noon on the selected day. Use the editing techniques discussed previously to position and change its duration.
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Although events on the same calendar cannot be “drawn” over the same time slot, you can make two events at the same time with the same duration by creating them in separate time slots and then dragging them to the same slot.
If you prefer working within the Month view, you can add new events in this view by double-clicking on the calendar cell of a day. This creates a new event and extends the Information drawer, which provides convenient access to the time/duration values for the event.
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If you’d prefer to edit the event duration by dragging, you can quickly jump to the Day view by double-clicking the date (number) in the Month view.
To set these attributes, quickly jump to the Day view by double-clicking the day’s number within the Month view.
To remove any event, highlight it in any of the three calendar views; then press your Delete key, or choose Edit, Delete.
Events don’t usually happen in a vacuum. If you’re planning a party and no one else knows they’re invited, you may have a problem. iCal supports the notion of event invitations and acceptance. After creating an event, you can invite other people listed in your address book to the event, and they can then accept or decline.
To send an invitation, switch to the Day or Week calendar view so that the event you want to send invitations for is visible. Next, open the Information Drawer. You should see a field called Attendees. Here, you can simply start typing email addresses or names. If they are recognized as an Address Book entry, they will be automatically completed. Press Return between multiple addresses. After an address is added and “recognized,” it becomes an object in iCal. You can use the small pull-down menu attached to each attendee to choose between multiple email addresses stored for them, or to remove them or manually edit their email addresses, as shown in Figure 17.4.
Alternatively, you can invite people in your Address Book to the event by choosing Window, Show People (Option-Command-A) and dragging their individual vCard or a group vCard from the People window onto the event within the Calendar view pane. An icon of a person appears in the upper-right corner of the event in Day or Week view mode.
At this point, you’ve officially told iCal that you want to invite the listed people, but you haven’t yet sent invitations. To do this, you must click the “attendees” label in the Information window—a drop-down menu appears with the option to send invitations. Choose Send Invitations.
When you click the Send Invitations button, iCal works with Mail to send an invitation file to the people on the list. You’ll also notice that the attendees are displayed with a “?” icon in front of their names. This indicates that they are not yet confirmed as attending the event. Confirmed attendees are displayed with a check mark, whereas declined attendees show an “X.”
The recipient of an invitation, assuming that they have iCal installed, can double-click the invitation icon in their email. The iCal application on their system displays the dialog shown in Figure 17.5.
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Earlier in the chapter you were told that iCal uses the iCalendar standard for storing information about events. That means that people using other iCalendar-based scheduling programs, such as Microsoft Outlook, will be able to read invitations generated by iCal.
However, sending invitations to people who don’t have compatible calendaring software should be done the old-fashioned way—by sending a personally written email. (The iCal-generated messages are meant to be interpreted by computers and are not exactly friendly to human readers!)
As you’ve seen, invitation management is one use of the Information drawer as it applies to events. You can also use the Information drawer to change event descriptions, durations, and schedules. Eleven fields are available when an event is selected:
Event Title—. The name of the event being edited.
Event Location—. An arbitrary value, presumably where the event is taking place.
All-Day—. Whether it is an all-day event (not scheduled for a specific time).
From/To—. The date/time/duration of the event.
Attendees—. Covered previously.
Status—. The status of the event (Tentative, Confirmed, or Cancelled).
Repeat—. If an event occurs over several days, weeks, months, or years, use the Repeat field to set how often it appears on your calendar. You can also choose when the recurrences will end, if ever and when the event will end, if ever.
Alarm—. Choose to display a message, send an email, or play a sound. After choosing an action, a second field appears allowing you to set the number of minutes, hours, or days before an event starts that the action will take place.
Calendar—. The calendar that the event is stored on.
URL—. A URL that is pertinent to the given event.
Notes—. General notes and other information you might want to store about an event.
A To Do item differs from an event in that it doesn’t take place at a certain time but often must be completed by a given date. iCal can track your To Do items using the To Do List. Click the pushpin icon in the lower-right corner of the iCal window to display the To Do List, shown in Figure 17.6.
To add a new item to the list, highlight the calendar that should contain the To Do item and then double-click within the To Do List pane, or choose File, New To Do (Command-K). A new item is added to the list. By default, new To Do items have no deadline and can be flagged as “finished” simply by clicking the check boxes in front of them.
To add notes about a To Do entry and set a deadline, highlight the item in the To Do list and then open the Information Window drawer.
The To Do Info window allows you to enter extended text information about the item, choose whether it has been completed, pick a due date, assign it a priority, pick the calendar that it should be a part of, and assign an appropriate URL for extended information.
One of the most useful features of iCal is the ability to publish calendars to a .Mac account (or to other computers set up to be WebDAV servers) so that the others can subscribe to your calendar to view your schedule.
To publish an existing Calendar to the Internet, highlight the Calendar within your calendar list and then choose Calendar, Publish from the menu. The dialog shown in Figure 17.7 is displayed.
First, choose whether you’re using a .Mac account or a Web server (WebDAV). If you’re using .Mac, iCal automatically uses the .Mac account information contained in the Internet System Preferences. Otherwise, it prompts (as shown previously in Figure 17.7) for the WebDAV URL, login, and password.
Next, choose the information you want to be published:
Publish Name—. The name that the subscribers see when viewing your calendar.
Publish Changes Automatically—. Automatically update your published calendar when you make local changes in iCal.
Publish Subjects and Notes—. Publish the subject and note fields for events.
Publish Alarms—. Publish alarm information (alarm type, time, and so on) along with your events.
Publish To Do Items—. Include any To Do items in the Calendar as part of the publication.
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You can change any of these attributes later by selecting the calendar and opening the Information drawer.
Click the Publish button to send your calendar to the remote server. Published calendars are denoted by a “transmission” icon appearing after their name in the Calendar list.
After publishing, you are prompted with the option to Send Mail with your calendar information to those who might be interested in subscribing. You can also choose Visit Page to see a Web view of your Calendar. The Visit Page option is available only to .Mac subscribers and provides a fully interactive Web view of your calendar; non-Mac.com members can still visit the Web page to see the calendar.
You can update a published calendar with the latest changes by choosing Calendar, Refresh (Command-R) from the menu or by choosing Calendar, Refresh All (Shift+Command+R) to refresh all published calendars. To completely remove a Published calendar, use Calendar, Unpublish.
Subscribing to a Calendar is easier than publishing. In many cases, it’s as simple as clicking a webcal:// URL in your Web browser—this automatically creates a subscription in iCal. Apple has published a wide range of interesting online calendars in its iCal library at www.apple.com/ical/library/.
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Calendars available in the iCal Library cover topics ranging from official holidays to sporting event rosters, movie releases, and music tour schedules. It’s definitely worth a visit!
If you want a wider variety of iCal options, check out the iCalShare Channel listed in the Other Channels pane of Sherlock (as discussed in Chapter 13, “Using Sherlock for Internet Searches”).
To manually enter a subscription, choose Calendar, Subscribe (Option-Command-S). The subscription window shown in Figure 17.8 is displayed.
Enter the URL of an appropriately prepared iCal source, choose how often the calendar should automatically refresh, and whether to remove the creator’s alarms and To Do items from the calendar. Click Subscribe after you’ve configured the subscription to suit your needs. After a few seconds, the subscribed calendar will appear in your calendar list (differentiated from local calendars by the “shortcut” arrow following its name). You can refresh a subscribed calendar by choosing Calendar, Refresh (Command-R).
A few final preferences can be set from the iCal application preferences, shown in Figure 17.9.
Within the Week category, choose whether iCal recognizes a work (5 day) or normal (7 day) week, and what day of the week the calendar should use as the start day.
Use the Day settings to define how many hours are shown in a day, and of those hours, how many are visible onscreen simultaneously without scrolling.
To add a display of the event time within the Month view, click the Show Time in Month View check box.
Add time zone support to the Information window using the Turn on Time Zone Support check box.
Finally, the Events and To Do Items options provide control over how To Do Items are sorted, and when To Do items and events should be deleted or hidden from the Calendar view.
A few minor additional features are available from the iCal File menus that have not yet been covered in the course of this discussion.
As usual, the File menu is used to create new calendars, events, and To Do items. It can also, however, export and import calendar files.
Import—. Import calendar data from Entourage, and iCalendar or vCal format files.
Export—. Export the active calendar to an iCalendar format file.
Print—. Print a copy of the active calendar view.
iCal is a useful application for managing your schedule. With it, you can keep track of your own meetings, events, and To Do items—or even subscribe to the calendars others have set up. You can also use iCal to issue invitations to events in your calendar or share your full calendar so that family and friends will know what you’re up to.