Calendar User Item

Overview

A Calendar is a User Item that adds an interactive calendar to a Page.

Calendars are created by scripts that GedSite adds to the page and they will not be visible unless JavaScript is enabled in the browser. The scripts generate the HTML required to show the calendar and provide controls for changing from month to month or from day to day.

Each Calendar User Item may have one or more Calendar Events subitems to specify which events you want to include on the calendar. Events appear on the calendar on the anniversary date of their occurrence.

A Calendar is a Content Item and does not create a page of its own. You must add it to a Page User Item or you will not see its content.

The Calendar supports two date ranges, "Month" and "Day".

Month Range

When the range is set to Month, the User Item creates a grid for a single month and the visitor may navigate to other months. The initial view of the full month calendar is the current month. The person browsing the site may move forward or backwards a month at a time using arrows that appear near the display of the current month. When the user changes the month, a script stores the current month in the visitor's browser and redisplays that month when the user returns to the page.

In a small window, or on a device with a small screen, the monthly calendar will switch to a narrow-format.

Day Range

When the range is set to Day, the User Item creates a simple list of the events for a single day. The initial view of the day calendar is the current day. The person browsing the site may move forward or backwards a day at a time using arrows that appear near the display of the current day.

Formatting

On the Page that hosts the Calendar User Item, the calendar is enclosed by a DIV element that by default includes a border that also surrounds the calendar title and caption. You may adjust the formatting of the calendar using stylesheet parameters in the Styles.Calendar section.

Calendar Events

To add events to the calendar based on events in your GEDCOM file, you add Calendar Events via the [+] button beneath the Calendar Events list. Each Calendar Events subitem specifies a set of events. You must specify at least one enabled Calendar Events item.

You may include multiple Calendar Events items. This is rarely necessary, but may be useful if you have complex criteria to determine which people and events to include.

A new Calendar User Item includes a "BMDB" Calendar Events item that will add all primary Birth, Marriage, Death, and Burial events to the calendar. You may delete that item, or modify it, to suit your requirements.

See the Calendar Events Details section below for details about Calendar Events.

Calendar Properties

Title

Calendars must have a Title, but the Title may or may not appear on the page. If Show Title is checked, which is the default, the title text appears above the calendar.

Enabled

See Enabled in the Common Properties section of the User Items help page.

Range

The Range pull-down menu has the following choices:

• Month
• Day

When set to "Month", which is the default, the output will be a calendar month with events listed on the appropriate day of the month. When set to "Day", the output will be a list of events for the current day.

If you set the Range option to "Month", the Page Section property should be set to "Content" because the month calendar is wide and will usually not fit comfortably in other page sections. If you set the Range option to "Day", you can set the Page Section property to any of the available options.

Date Formats

The Date Format (Exact) pull-down menu controls the format of exact dates in the calendar. Exact dates include a month, day, and year, and do not include a modifier such as "before", "after", etc.

Events with exact dates are shown in the grid cell for a given day of the month; see November 7th in the example above.

Dates that are not exact are formatted using the format specified in the Date Format (Other) property.

Class

The Class textbox allows you to specify the name of a CSS class that will be added to the calendar's container. You may use the class in the selector of a User Style to customize the appearance of any Calendars with the specified class name.

Page Section

See Page Section in the Common Properties section of the User Items help page.

Calendar Events Details

For each Calendar Event item, you may specify a Person Filter to choose whose events are included, and an Event Filter to chose which events for those people are included. See the Filters section for more information about filters.

GedSite discards some events before the user's filter is applied:

1. GedSite ignores events that do not have a regular date.
2. GedSite ignores events whose dates do not include a month.
3. GedSite ignores events where one or more of the principals are living and the People section controls do not allow the event to be included in the site.

For events shared by two (or more) principals, GedSite will include the event if the event passes the event filter for at least one of the principals.

Special Dates

1. Some events in your data might occur on February 29th, but the current year shown in the calendar may not be a leap year. In that case, GedSite will include February 29th even in non-leap years so that the February 29th events are visible. If there are no events on February 29th, then the day will only be included for leap years.
2. Some partial event dates will specify a month and year but not a day. Those events appear in the calendar for the given month but are not assigned to a specific day.