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Having your appointments available with a single click on the menu bar clock is a great idea.
 technofile
Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983

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iCal in the menu bar, done right, via Calendarclock


August 4, 2004


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2004, The Post-Standard

   Last April I wrote a rave review of Menu Calendar, a Mac OS X program that provided a drop-down calendar in the menu bar. After a few months of use, I reluctantly stopped running Menu Calendar because the author turned it into the worst example of annoyware I'd seen in years.
   Each time I booted up, Menu Calendar told me a new version was waiting to be downloaded. For a week or two, I dutifully downloaded and installed each "new" version. When I finally realized that the author was simply trying to get me to buy the commercial version of the program -- trying to get me to do this every day, with every bootup -- I tossed the program into the trash.
   Luckily, good programs tend to drive out the bad ones. I've found a replacement for Menu Calendar that's even better. And it doesn't contain an ounce of annoyware anywhere in its code.
   The program is Calendarclock, from www.petermaurer.de. (It's a Web site in Germany. Click a few times to get to the Calendarclock page.) Calendarclock is free, but you can click a link to make a small payment if you want to. (I suggest paying a small shareware fee of at least $5 or $10 if you use the program daily.)
   Calendarclock is so new that the Help document is still unfinished. (It calls Calendarclock "Butler" at one point, referring to another program from the same author. No doubt the author, Peter Maurer, used the Butler program help as a guide when he wrote the help for Calendarclock and didn't get rid of all the references to the other program.)
   But that's a minor point in an otherwise splendid package. Calendarclock drops a monthly calendar down when you click once on the time at the upper right end of the menu bar. The calendar dutifully disappears when you click again on the clock. You can keep it on your screen all the time if you like.
   The current date is highlighted (in dark gray in my Mac's color scheme). Clicking once on any date, including the current day, turns that date green while showing your iCal appointments and To Do list items for that day in a small window below the calendar. You can click forward or back buttons to show other months or you can quickly show a different month through a drop-down list above the calendar.
   Double-clicking a date opens iCal to that day. Clicking a small round button between the back and forward buttons returns the calendar to the current date, and clicking a downward-pointing triangle opens a menu that, in turn, opens the calendar's preferences menu. You can navigate from the keyboard, too. The Help menu tells you how.
   Calendarclock is extraordinary software. Apple's omissions from the otherwise cleverly designed iCal become obvious when you start using Calendarclock. Having your appointments available with a single click on the menu bar clock is a great idea, and being able to open iCal to a particular date makes a lot of sense, too. Apple would be wise to incorporate these features into a new version of iCal.
   After you install Calendarclock, you'll probably see two clocks in your menu bar. You can turn off the system clock by clicking "Open Date & Time" in the Calendarclock drop-down menu and unchecking "Show the date and time."
   Note that you can customize the way Calendarclock displays the time. You have many choices, including one that shows the full date and your time zone along with the time. The help file shows how the display is put together if you'd like to roll your own; all you have to do is type your choices into the menu. Otherwise, you need only click on one of the many choices shown in the preferences.