Long-term Planning UI Ideas

[David Glass]

Not sure how many people are both here and on the forum, so if this is a 
dup for you, I apologize.

Looking for a little brainstorming, and maybe best practices for an 
interface for a long-term planner/calendar.

This is basically a Yearly Calendar view rather than a Monthly or Weekly 
view. Years would be along the top as a main heading, with the months 
broken out below them. Then, spread out along the time line (as colored 
bars ??) would be whatever projects are scheduled over those months.

Like so:

2011        2012        2013        ........
JFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASONDJFMAMJJASOND........
  xxxxxxxxxx
            yyyyyyyyyyyyyyy
                zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
                                    www.....


(hopefully that comes through OK)

I could do a really simple version using a bunch of graphics drawn 
directly on a card, but the time frame is arbitrary and could run 10s of 
years into the future (and maybe it doesn't have an end; similar to how 
Excel will let you scroll and scroll and scroll while continuously 
incrementing the column labels)), and maybe at least 10 into the past, 
and I'm not sure how I'd handle scrolling back and forward if everything 
was directly on a card.

I've thought maybe a DataGrid, but haven't come up with any indication 
on what the maximum number of columns is (assuming there'd be a column 
for each month), and also not sure I could get the 'double header' (year 
and months) to work. I'm also not sure the Form portion of the DG would 
work because the row will be arbitrarily wide, and I don't think I can 
set up the row template to handle that.

So, not sure what else is possible in LC (just starting out), so any and 
all input is welcome.

-- 
David Glass - Gray Matter Computing
graymattercomputing.com