Notice the calendar on the right side of the page. That is the XML feed of a google calendar, parsed by a PHP script in to the format you see rendered. My implementation renders the data as an unordered list, with css style attached to different fields. A more ambitious developer could take that same XML feed and render it as a traditional month view calendar. Because I lacked the technical experience to develop this, I used a lightbox to open the google calendar within the page (see the expand full calendar link).
I've styled rss/xml feeds in WordPress using plugins, but never on a plain html/css website. Is there a tutorial page somewhere that would get me started?
Charlie, my conclusions after researching calendars are the following:
1. Google Calendar is an optimal solution because it allows CMS usability and editing for the laymen. The caveat here is that there are traffic limitations with a calendar, so some kind of script would need to be written to cache the data on a schedule.
2. To me, an ideal implementation is something like this: - The XML feed is decoded/processed by some kind of server side implementation like PHP. - That data is piped in to a 7 column 4 row table which represents a month's worth of days. - Day information is accessed by clicking or floating the cursor over the focus'ed day.
3. Customization would extend beyond what is possible with embedded iframe calendars, so that the calendar could be really small, and/or styled to better match the look & feel of your site for tighter integration.
I'll look in to some of the resources I found, but basically you'll want to search for documentation that has to do with: - PHP to parse XML - Parsing Google Calendar XML feeds - How to format tabular/XML data in to a calendar like format
Just be aware that if you use the method where you grab the contents of the iframe that the Google Calendar embed provides, that you are still at the mercy of the rendered HTML. If Google ever changes the CSS class names and/or HTML structure, then your code and styles may not work properly.
Other than that caveat, I like that method as a quick way to reuse all the integrated technology that Google has already programmed into their calendar UI.
Here is another similar post about how to do this, with some explanation of the various class names that are generated in the code.
Thank you.
Can Stylish do that? Or is there another way(s)?
Notice the calendar on the right side of the page. That is the XML feed of a google calendar, parsed by a PHP script in to the format you see rendered. My implementation renders the data as an unordered list, with css style attached to different fields. A more ambitious developer could take that same XML feed and render it as a traditional month view calendar. Because I lacked the technical experience to develop this, I used a lightbox to open the google calendar within the page (see the expand full calendar link).
Let me know if I can be of further help.
Cheers
I've styled rss/xml feeds in WordPress using plugins, but never on a plain html/css website. Is there a tutorial page somewhere that would get me started?
I've also found this link... although I don't quite understand it. Seems to good to be true.
1. Google Calendar is an optimal solution because it allows CMS usability and editing for the laymen. The caveat here is that there are traffic limitations with a calendar, so some kind of script would need to be written to cache the data on a schedule.
2. To me, an ideal implementation is something like this:
- The XML feed is decoded/processed by some kind of server side implementation like PHP.
- That data is piped in to a 7 column 4 row table which represents a month's worth of days.
- Day information is accessed by clicking or floating the cursor over the focus'ed day.
3. Customization would extend beyond what is possible with embedded iframe calendars, so that the calendar could be really small, and/or styled to better match the look & feel of your site for tighter integration.
I'll look in to some of the resources I found, but basically you'll want to search for documentation that has to do with:
- PHP to parse XML
- Parsing Google Calendar XML feeds
- How to format tabular/XML data in to a calendar like format
You might want to take a look at http://sugi.github.com/jquery-gcal-flow/
Just be aware that if you use the method where you grab the contents of the iframe that the Google Calendar embed provides, that you are still at the mercy of the rendered HTML. If Google ever changes the CSS class names and/or HTML structure, then your code and styles may not work properly.
Other than that caveat, I like that method as a quick way to reuse all the integrated technology that Google has already programmed into their calendar UI.
Here is another similar post about how to do this, with some explanation of the various class names that are generated in the code.
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2012/04/integrating-google-calendar-with-your-website/