Improving the layout, or, How do I know which date/month I am looking at?

[uncovery]

Hi there!

[Disclaimer] I know I can change these things in custom templates. I still find this is an issue that should be resolved by the default template. It’s not a HUGE issue or bug, but still I think the default template has improvement potential. [/Disclaimer]

I have included the [tribe_events view=”day”] into the front page of the website. The calendar displays fine, everything works perfectly. From a UI/usability point of view, there seems to be a (from my perspective) obvious shortcoming in the way the information is structured. I wonder if I am doing something wrong or if other people agree with me here.

The layout is structured as follows:

[ prev/next day links ]
[ time of the event (e.g. 5:00pm)] <- this is nice, large, with a grey underlying bar.
[ title of the event ] <- also, nice large print
[ date and time of the event (e.g. Thursday, August 16 @ 5:00 pm – 2:00 am)] <- small, long
[… next event …]

After clicking a couple of times on the [next day links], I need to look at the [ date and time of the event ] BELOW the time, title to find out which date I am actually looking right now. From my perspective, the date that I am looking at should be above the line with the time or, if nothing else next to the time. The issue here is that the information about the date in the $post loop does not contain a properly formatted date (only ‘EventStartDate’ => ‘2018-08-16 17:00:00’,) and that the format of the time is so dominant that it’s hard to actually put a date on top of it that does not look ridiculous without also changing the format the time is displayed in.

To fix that I have to take the whole template, re-format the CSS for the time header, get the date from the $post->EventStartDate, reformat that to show it in the format as given in the settings of the Events Calendar (is there a manual how to retrieve all the time/date formats from the events calendar somewhere?) and insert it into the top of the events loop.

Similarly, if the default view is “Month”, I can only conclude that I am looking right now at “August” since the links to the next and previous months say “September” and “July”, respectively. The week version has the dates of the individual days on the header, so that’s more informative. The List view however, while it lists the Month in large letters on the top, does not have a sub-header with the days before the events are listed. One has to find out the date by looking at the sub-header of the event’s title.

I know the information is in the search bar, but I don’t think that is a valid fix for the issue. People do not look intuitively at a search bar outside of the previous/next area to find out which information they are looking at. Further, for example in the month view, the search bar shows a month as ‘2018-08’ while the prev/next shows them as July/September, so it’s not intuitive. The list format has this same format discrepancy.

So the fix would have to be done for 3 display formats. I think this should be considered as a UI improvement potential for the default template however.

Thanks for reading!

P.S.: If you look at the website in question, I also think that one day should be several events instead of cramming 5 timeslots into one event entry. It’s not my decision though, unfortunately. That does not change the issue at hand though.

• This topic was modified 5 years, 8 months ago by uncovery.

[Sky]

Hi there,

There is currently a bug when using the tribe_events shortcode where the title that has the current view information is not showing. Our developers have been working hard on a fix, and this should be taken care of soon.

I will attach this thread to the bug ticket, and someone will follow up with you here to let you know when the fix has been released.

Please let me know if you have any questions about this in the meantime.

Thanks,
Sky

[Victor]

Hi Oliver!

Just wanted to share with you that a new release of our plugins is out, including a fix for this issue 🙂

Find out more about this release → https://theeventscalendar.com/release-event-tickets-4-8-event-tickets-plus-4-8/

We apologize for the delay and appreciate your patience while we worked on this.

As always, we suggest to setup a dev/staging site so you can make all plugin updates without disrupting the live site.

Please update the plugins and let us know if the fix works for your site.

Best,
Victor

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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