I’ve recently considered using a Google calendar for a project, and tried to embed it in a web site.

However, there are a few issues I’m having with it:

  • Colors: it’s blue, which clashes with the site colors
  • Multiple calendars: the UI for enabling/disabling which calendars to show is too hidden
  • Long way to the map: I love that you can add map information to entries in the calendar, however, it takes two extra windows to reach the map: first you have to go to the details of the entry (although the address is in the balloon) which opens in a new window, then locate and follow the map link, which opens another new window.

Also the “multiple calendars” feature is a bit hackish. I’d like to be able to differentiate events by flags such as “city”, “outskirts”, “training”, “dance event”, “music event”. Obviously, entries might have more than one, so I’d need 6 calendars for this already. Usually, you can combine five…

Guess I’d need to do this all in Ajax by myself. It would be cool if Google Calendar hat an API for embedding like it has for maps. The Calendar API I’ve seen so far is basically polling the raw data via JSON or XML. Which is already great, but I do like some of the calendar layouting the do, and I’d like to avoid having to replicate that myself.