FlatCalendarXP F.A.Q.

Here are all kinds of tips and tricks that will help you greatly in mastering and enjoying FlatCalendarXP. Please come to visit our web site http://www.calendarxp.net from time to time and you will find more interesting stuff.

How to add a FlatCalendar to my web page?

Simply insert the calendar tag to anywhere in your webpage, like a common HTML tag(NN4 needs more care). It'll then turn into a beautiful calendar in your browser. Magic?!

How to use the themes?

Create an empty directory, put the engine files in. Then go inside the themes directory and pick up a theme you like, copy all files of the theme to the directory just created. Finally, if you want to add agendas, you may start with the agenda.js in the HelloWorld demo, using it as a template to create your own.

It's quite straightforward, please check out the Tutorials for more details and samples.

How to upgrade from the old version?

If you are upgrading from within the same major version, e.g. from 6.0 to 6.1, all you need is to copy the new engine files to overwrite the old ones. That's all, there is no need to change your production page or any theme options. It's quite easy and painless.

If you want to upgrade across major versions, e.g. from 5.2 to 6.0, then in addition to replacing the engine files you may also need to migrate the old theme options to the new theme if you want to keep your old theme working. Most of the time you don't need to change anything in your web page unless it is explicitly required by the new version in its release notes.

How to localize the calendar so that it shows in languages other than english?

FlatCalendarXP comes with great themes optimized for English environment. But it's quite simple to localize them since all text strings are stored externally in either the theme files or the agenda file. All you need is to open them with a text editor like notepad and replace the English strings with your own language strings, then modify the css file to use corresponding font families.

If your page was generated dynamically by ASP server and you saw rectangles instead of normal fonts in Netscape 4.x, please set the http charset header to "" by using Response.Charset="" in your asp page. This header has to be set before anything else.

If your page aims to support multiple languages(i18n), please follow the instructions in the i18n tutorials to create a simple i18n framework.

How can I retrieve daily agendas from the backend database?

Depending on the cgi service you are using the solution might be a little different. The basic idea is to make your cgi service produce the agenda.js dynamically, e.g. from a JSP or ASP. We had it detailed in the "Setting up agendas & holidays" tutorial.

How to set the initial month?

When first loaded, the calendar will show up with the month set by the default-month parameter in the name & id properties of the calendar tag. For example, you may set the name&id of the calendar tag to "[2002,10]:normal:agenda.js" and the calendar will then start on Oct 2002. Or you may choose "[gToday[0],gToday[1]+1]:normal:agenda.js" so that it will always show the next month at the beginning.

How to change colors, fonts and other options?

There are 2 files involved in a theme that control the look of the calendar - theme-name.js & theme-name.css. They are all self-documented and you may use any text editor to fulfill the change. Please refer to "Working with themes" tutorial for details.

How to align the date number within the calendar cell?

Go to the theme-name.css file and find the .CalCell class, change the value of text-align to left, center or right. To align it vertically, you'll have to turn it into a table cell first by adding a CSS2 display rule and then a vertical-align rule as following:

.CalCell {...; display:table-cell; vertical-align:middle; }

How to perform a specific action when a date is clicked?

For example, you want to perform the alert() function.

How can I change the style of the outside calendar border?

Simply change the #outerTable CSS style in the theme-name.css file. Since version 7.0 the style of iframe calendar tag no longer contains any border style properties.

Note: NN4 doesn't support outside border, it can only have the table border set by gsOuterTable in theme-name.js file.

How can I have 2 or more events within the same day?

The agenda event is set per day. If you have 2 more events in the same day, you need to code your own functions to merge them into 1 agenda. And you may take advantage of the html parameter of the agenda to stuff in more messages and even images into the calendar cell.

For example, add the following function to the top of agenda.js and replace all fAddEvent calls with fAppendEvent.

function fAppendEvent(y,m,d,message,action,bgcolor,fgcolor,bgimg,boxit,html) {
  var ag=fGetEvent(y,m,d);
  if (ag==null) fAddEvent(y,m,d,message,action,bgcolor,fgcolor,bgimg,boxit,html);
  else fAddEvent(y,m,d,message?ag[0]+"\n"+message:ag[0],action?action:ag[1],
bgcolor?bgcolor:ag[2],fgcolor?fgcolor:ag[3],bgimg?bgimg:ag[4],boxit?boxit:ag[5],ag[6]+html);
}

In the above sample, the message and html will be appended while the action, colors and background images will be substituted by the subsequently added sub-events. But this is only our choice and you may modify it to implement your own solution. Note that do not use onclick event in the html for sub-events, use onmousedown instead.

Please check out the agenda.js of the msn-alike demo for a good example.

The calendar doesn't show up in full or too large at first, but recovers after month switching. What's wrong?

The calendar panel size is set initially by the width and height properties of <iframe> tag. If these 2 values are not matching the actual size, the calendar engine will try to detect the real size after a short delay specified by giResizeDelay option. The incorrect initial size problem will happen when the browser is not rendering DHTML faster enough so that the document is not ready upon the size checking time.

If this is happening when using the calendar within tabstrip/multipage controls of asp.net, you may fix it by either setting the AutoPostBack property of the tabstrip control to true, or appending an onclick="if(gfFlat)gfFlat.fResize()" handler for the tabstrip to resize the calendar. e.g.

<ie:TabStrip runat="server" TargetID="mpage" onclick="if(gfFlat)gfFlat.fResize()" ...>
...

Of course you should name your calendar context to gfFlat for the latter solution.

If this is happening in other situations, try increasing giResizeDelay a bit. But don't set it too large because it will bring in visible delay. Another solution is to adjust the width and height of the calendar tag to be the correct initial sizes.

After configuring the theme, why all the calendar cells appear empty in Netscape 4.x?

Make sure the giCellWidth is set larger enough. Try increasing it 10 pixels a time until you see everything back normal. It's a NN4 bug triggered when extra stuff stretching the top or bottom section too much wider than the total width of date cells. Making the top and/or bottom sections shorter could be another solution.

Not all my agenda properties are working, why?

Please check the gAgendaMask option in your theme settings. Make sure the mask value is properly set. The agenda property will be masked out if the relevant bit value is not set to -1.

How to disable days, like weekends?

Quite simple, all you need is to put 2 lines of code to the top of fHoliday() function in agenda.js file so that it looks like:

function fHoliday(y,m,d) {
  var dayOfWeek=new Date(y,m-1,d).getDay();
  if (dayOfWeek==0||dayOfWeek==6) return ["Weekend is not selectable!",null];
...

It creates a "null" agenda template, null value in the action property, for the weekends so that they can't be selected. You may also disable other dates via the same way. A tip is to have other properties of agenda defined in the template in order to make the disabled dates in different colors, backgrounds or even images.

I have many duplicate events occuring regularly, must I generate an agenda for each of them?

No, you don't need. Duplicate events can be treated as holidays. Instead of repeating the fAddEvent() calls, using fHoliday() to return a single agenda template is much more faster and efficient. The above FAQ for disabling weekends is a good example. Also please check the setup agenda tutorial for more detailed info.

How can I access the DOM objects of the webpage that contains the calendar from within the plugins?

The build-in gContainer reference, which points to the enclosing window object, is made for such purpose. Suppose you have a form named "testForm" with a <input> tag named "dateInput" laying in the same page as the calendar. And you want to put the selected date from the calendar into the "dateInput" field with the "y/m/d" date format. To achieve such purpose, you should use the following code in plugins.js file:

function fAfterSelected(y,m,d) {
  gContainer.document.testForm.dateInput.value=y+"/"+m+"/"+d;
}
Another example is that if you opened a new window that contains a FlatCalendar and wanted to return the selected date into a field in the original page.
function fAfterSelected(y,m,d) {
  gContainer.opener.document.testForm.dateInput.value=y+"/"+m+"/"+d;
}

How can I reset the system defined "today" to a date specified in the server-end?

The calendar engine has 2 system objects "gd" and "gToday" which can be overriden in agenda.js file. You may exploit this feature when you want the calendar to mark a server-end "today" instead of a client-side "today".

1st, you need to prepend the following lines of code to the top of agenda.js file.

gd=new Date(2003,3-1,11); // You may use any date you want.
gToday=[gd.getFullYear(),gd.getMonth()+1,gd.getDate()];
gCurMonth=eval(gTheme[0]); // re-init the gCurMonth in case it using gToday.

2nd, you do a search in the theme-name.js file that your theme is using, e.g. normal.js, for any references to gToday. And copy those options definition to agenda.js file and put them just below the above lines. e.g.

gd=new Date(2003,3-1,11); // You may use any date you want.
gToday=[gd.getFullYear(),gd.getMonth()+1,gd.getDate()];
gCurMonth=eval(gTheme[0]); // re-init the gCurMonth in case it using gToday.

gsBottom="..."; // re-init gsBottom if it contains reference to gToday. (optional)
gdSelect=gToday; // re-init gdSelect if it references to gToday. (optional)

And that's it. Of course, you may use ASP/JSP to generate the agenda.js so that you can specify a server-end date, like:

gd=new Date(<%= year %>,<%= month %>-1,<%= day %>); // year, month, day are server-end variables
...

Also note that all options in the theme-name.js can be reset dynamically in this manner.

How come the widths of calendar columns look different in size after I reconfigured the theme?

Please check whether the upper Navigation Section or lower Today Section is wider than the total width of date cells. The calendar panel will automatically get stretched if the outter table width becomes larger, and the streched part might not be evenly distributed among all columns.

You may either enlarge the giCellWidth or cut down the stuff in top/bottom sections to fix this problem.

How to set the date range to begin from today?

Simply set the gBegin option to gToday in theme-name.js file, as following:

...
var gBegin=gToday; // calendar date range begin from [Year,Month,Date]
var gEnd=[2030,12,31];
...

Why IE6 began to show strange white space along the right and bottom sides after I added a DOCTYPE! statement?

It's a bug of IE6 when setting the border style of <iframe> tag in standard mode. To workaround, you may remove the border style from the <iframe> tag and put it into the #outerTable class in theme-name.css file instead. All themes in version 7.0 and above have already been using this solution to create calendar borders.

#outerTable {border:2px ridge #808080;}

I would like to use images instead of the text numbers for the date numbers. Would this be easy to do?

Yes, easy. There is an option in the theme-name.js file called gsDays which will be evaluated upon each calendar cell. Simply name your image files as day1.gif, day2.gif, ... and create a function, named fGetDateCell(), in the plugins.js as following:

function fGetDateCell(dateStr) {
  var d=dateStr.split(",")[2];
  return "<IMG src='/images/day"+d+".gif' height=... width=... >";
}

and set the gsDays to:

var gsDays="fGetDateCell(sCellDate);";

Note the sCellDate above is an internal contextual variable that stores the current cell date in format "y,m,d".

How to mark the Easter on the calendar?

Well, there are tons of Easter algorithms on the internet. Here we just randomly pick one to implement. What we need is to create a function in the plugins.js to return the Easter date and then use it in fHoliday() to verify whether the day is Easter or not.

function getEaster(year) {
var a=year%19, b=Math.floor(year/100), c=year%100, d=Math.floor(b/4), e=b%4, f=Math.floor((b+8)/25), g=Math.floor((b-f+1)/3), h=(19*a+b-d-g+15)%30, i=Math.floor(c/4), k=c%4, l=(32+2*e+2*i-h-k)%7, m=Math.floor((a+11*h+22*l)/451), n=h+l-7*m+114;
return [Math.floor(n/31),n%31+1];
}

then in agenda.js:

function fHoliday(y,m,d) {
...
var easter=getEaster(y);
if (m==easter[0]&&d==easter[1]) r=[gMonths[m-1].substring(0,3)+" "+d+", "+y+" Easter Day", gsAction,"#87ceeb","red"];
return r; // if r is null, the engine will just render it as a normal day.
}

How can I make Monday/Sunday the first day of week?

Easy. There is an option in the theme-name.js file called gbEuroCal. Set it to true will make Monday the first day of week, false will make Sunday the first day of week.

How can I have a default tooltip message for every normal date?

Easy. Just need to add 1 line of code in fHoliday() to return a default agenda instead of null value for every normal day. e.g.

function fHoliday(y,m,d) {
...
if (r==null) return ["A message for everyday", gsAction];
return r; // if r is null, the engine will just render it as a normal day.
}

How can I organize theme files in a different directory other than the default engine directory?

In the calendar tag, you need to change the value of name & id properties to include the absolute/relative path to the theme directory. e.g.

<iframe name="gToday:/theme1/normal:agenda.js" id="gToday:/theme1/normal:agenda.js" src="/engine/iflateng.htm" ... ></iframe>

The above tag will load the normal theme from /theme1/ virtual directory on your website instead of the /engine/ directory.

Note that you can't specify the protocol name and domain name in the name & id, because they are fixed to the one used by the src property.

How come the calendar stops working in NN4 once I add in the Thawte certificate seal?

It's a bug of the Thawte seal script and can be easily fixed by appending a line of script right behind it. i.e.

<script src="https://siteseal.thawte.com/cgi/server/thawte_seal_generator.exe"></script>
<script>if (document.layers) document.releaseEvents(Event.MOUSEDOWN);</script>

The 1st <script> is the Thawte seal script, and the 2nd one is the fix.

Where can I find a working example for the calendar working with asp.net tabstrip/multipage controls?

Please try the following one. Note the form id must be set to the same as the one passed in to gfPop.fPopCalendar(), otherwise the calendar will not be able to find the date input field.

TabStripDemo.aspx

<%@ Register TagPrefix="ie" Namespace="Microsoft.Web.UI.WebControls" Assembly="Microsoft.Web.UI.WebControls" %>
<html>
<body>
<form id="demoform" runat="server">

<ie:TabStrip runat="server" TargetID="mpage" AutoPostBack="true"
TabDefaultStyle="background-color:#000000;font-family:verdana;font-weight:bold;font-size:8pt;color:#ffffff;width:100px;height:21px;text-align:center"
TabHoverStyle="background-color:#777777"
TabSelectedStyle="background-color:#ffffff;color:#000000">
<ie:Tab Text="PopCalendar" />
<ie:TabSeparator/>
<ie:Tab Text="FlatCalendar" />
<ie:TabSeparator/>
<ie:Tab Text="About"/>
</ie:TabStrip>

<ie:MultiPage id="mpage" SelectedIndex="1" runat="server">
<ie:PageView>
&nbsp;Date Field: <input name="dc" value="" size="11"><a href="javascript:void(0)" onclick="gfPop.fPopCalendar(document.demoform.dc);return false;" HIDEFOCUS><img name="popcal" align="absbottom" src="calbtn.gif" width="34" height="22" border="0" alt=""></a>
</ie:PageView>

<ie:PageView>
<iframe name="gToday:normal:agenda.js:gfFlat" id="gToday:normal:agenda.js:gfFlat" src="iflateng.htm" scrolling="no" frameborder="0">
</iframe>
</ie:PageView>

<ie:PageView>
Copyright (C)2003 Idemfactor Solutions, Inc.
</ie:PageView>
</ie:MultiPage>
</form>

<iframe name="gToday:supermini:agenda.js" id="gToday:supermini:agenda.js" src="ipopeng.htm" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="visibility:visible; z-index:999; position:absolute; left:-500px; top:0px;">
</iframe>
</body>
</html>

Put the above TabStripDemo.aspx into a virtual directory on your IIS with the supermini theme for PopCalendarXP and normal theme for FlatCalendarXP.

Note: If you don't want to set the AutoPostBack of tabstrip control, you should append the following onclick code to workaround a bug in the tab/multipage control. (A bug that will mess up the calendar, but only seems affecting IE.)

<ie:TabStrip runat="server" TargetID="mpage" onclick="if(gfPop)gfPop.fHideCal();if(gfFlat)gfFlat.fResize()" ...>

How to make the month/year dropdown list show only values in valid date range?

Sometimes we don't want to see month/year values that are out of the valid date range we specified in the month/year selectors. This logic has already been implemented in most themes, but for certain themes that use html dropdown lists, e.g. normal theme, we still need to build a small plugin as following in the plugins.js so as to keep only valid months/years in list (note this plugin doesn't support NN4).

// Append the following to the bottom of plugins.js file
giDCStyle=1;
gsCalTitle="fBuildCalTitle()";

function fBuildCalTitle(){
  if (!gdBegin||!gdEnd) return "";
  var a=[];
  var mstr=["<SELECT id='MonSelect' class='CalTitle' onchange='if(!fSetCal(fGetById(document,\"YearSelect\").value, this.value,0,true,event))fRepaint()'>"];
  for (var i=0; i<12; i++) {
    if (gCurMonth[0]==gdBegin.getFullYear()&&i<gdBegin.getMonth()) continue;
    if (gCurMonth[0]==gdEnd.getFullYear()&&i>gdEnd.getMonth()) break;
    mstr.push("<OPTION value='",i+1,"' "+(i==gCurMonth[1]-1?"selected":"")+">",gMonths[i],"</OPTION>");
  }
  mstr.push("</SELECT>"); mstr=mstr.join('');
  var ystr=["<SELECT id='YearSelect' class='CalTitle' onchange='if(!fSetCal(this.value, fGetById(document,\"MonSelect\").value,0,true,event))fRepaint()'>"];
  for(var i=gdBegin.getFullYear();i<=gdEnd.getFullYear();i++)
    ystr.push("<OPTION value='",i,"' "+(i==gCurMonth[0]?"selected":"")+">",i,"</OPTION>");
  ystr.push("</SELECT>");
  ystr=ystr.join('');
  if (gbDCSeq) a.push(mstr,ystr);
  else a.push(ystr,mstr);

  return a.join("");
}

Why the agendas don't get refreshed until I manually click the refresh button of the browser?

It's because the javascripts are by default cached by the browser. If you don't want the browser to do the caching, you should give the agenda url a random parameter to make it different everytime the browser loading the page. e.g. a JSP example would be

<iframe name="gToday:normal:agenda.js?dummy=<%=System.currentMillis()%>" id="gToday:normal:agenda.js?dummy=<%=System.currentMillis()%>"... >

The dummy param works as an unique id to prevent the agenda.js from being cached by the browser.

How to pass parameters to the scripts that generate the agenda file?

If you want to create a calendar that belongs to a user, you may need to pass the user id to the scripts that generate the agenda file so that the calendar only shows up the events related to that specific user.

CalendarXP has already taken it into account and all you need is set the url in the name & id of the calendar tag, as following:

<iframe name="gToday:normal:agenda.jsp?userId=<%=obj.getUserID()%>" id="gToday:normal:agenda.jsp?userId=user1"
...></iframe>

The above example is using JSP to generate the agenda file, of course you may use Perl, ASP, PHP or whatever else instead.

Note: you must escape any non-alphabetical chars in the URL, especially the colon char. Running the parameter string through an URL encoding filter and using the transformed string in the name & id of the calendar tag is always a safe way to go.

Can I use the week number to launch an action, like the day number does?

Yes, any actions can be associated with the week numbers, e.g. popup windows, change url or even update calendar events. Simply append the following to the plugins.js file:

gsWeeks="fFormatWeekNo(weekNo)";

function fFormatWeekNo(weekNo) {
var y=gCurMonth[0], m=gCurMonth[1];
var year=m==1&&weekNo>50?y-1:m==12&&weekNo<5?y+1:y;
return "<a class='WeekAnchor' href='javascript:void(0)' onclick='fOnWeekNo(" + year + ","
       + weekNo + ");return false;'>" + weekNo + "</a>";
}

function fOnWeekNo(year, weekNo) {
...
}

Now you may do whatever you like in the fOnWeekNo() function. It'll be called every time you click on the week number on the calendar. Please note that Lite Edition doesn't support week numbers.

How to change the size of the calendar?

The calendar size is determined by the calendar cell size and the padding and spacing size of the panel table. They can be adjusted easily by editing the following options in the theme-name.js file: giCellWidth, giCellHeight, gsInnerTable, gsOuterTable.

The calendar panel looks like being squeezed in Konqueror sometimes. What's wrong?

It's because sometimes the Konqueror has difficulty in expanding the calendar panel to the correct size. Currently it can be worked around by giving the iframe tag a larger-than-usual width value since it appears to have no problem in shrinking automatically. e.g. <iframe width=600 ...>

Why the prev/next month links only respond to the first click in Konqueror?

It's a bug of certain Konqueror version. This bug exists outside the calendar engine and you may test it with any simply link on a blank page - the onclick event will not be fired after your first click unless you move the mouse out of the link and back in again. Currently it can be worked around by using onmousedown event handler instead of onclick. (Modify gsNavPrev/gsNavNext options accordingly)

It looks like this bug only occurs on anchor links, it's not affecting buttons.

How to prevent the calendar from being switched to prev/next months when a day of them is selected?

You need to put 4 lines of code into the fOnChange() plugin function. e.g.

function fOnChange(y,m,d,e) {
...

if (m!=gCurMonth[1]&&[y,m,d]+''!=gToday+'') { // cancel the auto month switching
  fRepaint();
  return true;
}

return false; // return true to cancel the change.
}

So afterwards, clicking the dimmed days that belongs to prev/next months will no longer automatically switch the calendar.

 

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