Comments on: Connector has ICS support? What the heck is ICS?

By: Derek

Derek — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 00:16:00 +0000

Are you using one of the RubyForge libraries for ICS support; iCal Tool, iCalendar, vpim? If so which one?

By: Bryan Bell

Bryan Bell — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:07:23 +0000

@Bijan Kafi

You are completely correct about subscription calendars needing authentication. I should not have omitted that from my article.

You are also completely correct in thinking that having the ability to share some calendars without authentication would be a killer feature. My dad, who recently got his own Connector and whose questions about features inspired this article, wanted to use his connector to manage a list of family events. He could try to get around the “authentication restriction” by adding a catch-all “public” user. Unfortunately, that would give the rest of the family too much access to his Connector. The only solution I could think of was to export his calendar periodically and then uploading it to a Bingo Disk. It should be simpler to do.

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:09:21 +0000

Any technology used should be obfuscated from the user. Just have a link saying “Subscribe to a calendar”, or “Make this calendar public” or something, without mentioning any technology.

The user doesn’t need to know what technology is being used, and it’s also easier to upgrade the technology at work without changing the interface.

Stop using the ugly RSS icon. The browsers got this right when they put that RSS icon (the ‘transmitting’ one) in the regular interface areas.

By: Bijan Kafi

Bijan Kafi — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:33:26 +0000

I was under the impression that I cannot send anyone the link to my ICS calendar, as the URL requires login informatio, thus making necessary a Connector account.

Am I wrong in thinking this? It would indeed be great to share my Connector calendar with “Non-Connector-Team-People.”

By: Dave

Dave — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 13:09:20 +0000

I was a technical writer in a former life, so my answer’s going to be that one solution is to start by placing a (more info) link after the ics icon and linking to this blog post! =) I think it does a great job of explaining what the feature is, why it’s relevant/interesting to me, and how it works.

The big question is who your audience is and how much they know about (or are interested in) the technology behind Connector. Those answers will inform the rest of your decisions.