I did some volunteer web site work for a local organization to which I
belong and I was asked how they could put their event calendar on the web, so I investigated how other groups were doing the
event calendars on their sites.
Some use a print-oriented tool and then put static copies of their calendars
on the web, which fails to take advantage of the interactive and visual capabilities of the web. Others use web-oriented tools
to put dynamic, interactive calendars on their web sites but this requires that their webhosting provider allow them to install
and run the required software on the server. Many groups just have the bare-bones web hosting package included with their
Internet service that does not allow this server-side scripting capability.
Then I discovered a FREE Javascript-based solution by
Kevin Ilsen (calendar.ilsen.net) which provides the functionality people have come to expect in online calendars without requiring server-side scripting
capability. It presents the events in a standard monthly calendar format automatically starting on the current month. Other
months are available at the click of a button, similar to flipping the pages of a paper calendar. This can make available
a great deal of information in a compact format which is less likely to look stale and can be easier to maintain since you
only have to edit it when there are scheduling changes. In addition:
- It’s FREE.
- It lets you include images to make it more visually
attractive.
- It lets you include hyperlinks to connect you to
pages or documents with further information.
- You enter and update events without having to edit HTML code.
- For easier maintenance, you can separate the parts that don't generally
change such as the calendar rendering script from those that do such as the event definitions.
- You can customize elements of the calendar display without having to edit the script
by setting configuratrion variables.
- It works with multiple browsers and doesn’t require the latest
versions to display correctly.
- You can also view the calendar locally on your computer without
running a web server - this is useful for testing before you upload it to your web site.
As I continued to use his calendar I kept finding ways to make the
tool better as well as gaining experience in how to make better use of it. I have now made a number of enhancements to his scripts and released my own version here (but it’s still FREE) along
with my usage tips. User suggestions have already inspired more usage tips and script improvements that will become available
in future releases.
