Long-term Planning UI Ideas

[dglass]

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.

Code: Select all

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

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.