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Release Notes (Website: Events Calendar) - August 17, 2017


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Release Notes (Website: Events Calendar) - August 17, 2017

Today’s release includes Geocaching.com’s newest feature on the updated Dashboard: 
The events calendar.

Your personalized events calendar shows if and when a geocaching event is nearby. You can view details about an event, its location on a map, or see if your friends are attending the event. And you can select RSVP to log your “Will attend” right there.

The events calendar shows events from the previous, current, and upcoming month within a 100 mile (160 km) radius from your home coordinates. You can select any date to see further information about up to 2 events near you that day, and the closest Mega- or Giga-Event. 

The events calendar is displayed on the right side of the news feed on your Dashboard at https://www.geocaching.com/account/dashboard. (Try a hard refresh of your web browser if you don't see the calendar right away.)

Jayme H and Dave W. (HiddenGnome) from HQ’s Product and Web Teams are watching this thread to answer questions whenever possible.

Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks!
 

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Hey, that's cool! I think I like it.

Two things: I'm seeing up to 3 regular and/or CITO events per day (which I think is just fine, but you said it would be 2 events) and the Going Ape 2017 mega isn't showing up on 8/19, even though it's within my 100 mile radius.

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Nice feature. It helps to fill in the vast empty space on the dashboard.

1 hour ago, Geocaching HQ said:

Your personalized events calendar shows if and when a geocaching event is nearby.
...
The events calendar shows events from the previous, current, and upcoming month within a 100 mile (160 km) radius from your home coordinates.

Give us a setting so we can define what "nearby" means to each of us and you'd have a real winner. :grin: If I had the option, I'd set mine to only about 40 km. Any farther and I most likely need to pay for a ferry and/or cross into another country.

Like Windstorm+, I'm also seeing a max of three events rather than the quoted two, and no Mega/Giga events.

A suggestion: The "Search events" link appears after you select a date, but all it does is a regular event search with the results sorted by distance from home. By its placement, it implies that it might search for all events on that date, since that's when it appeared as an option. In order to reduce this confusion, it should be moved somewhere else and/or relabeled to something like "Show all nearby events" and/or made to be visible all the time.

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Another suggestion: It would be great if events that I've logged as "Will attend" were highlighted in some way in the list, as well as the date highlighted on the calendar. That would make it easy at-a-glance to see what events are coming up that I need to remember to show up at. :laughing:

Edited by The A-Team
Clarification
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Cool. Very very cool. With a few improvements, it might eliminate the need for our local event calendar, which is a shared Google calendar that is manually maintained.

Here are a few thoughts after playing around with it a little.

  • I have to open the event listing to see when the event is. I can get a rough idea of where it is from the direction and distance indicated, and if I click I get a better idea where it is from the map that appears. But I still have to open the listing because I can't find the time the event is being held.
  • There is no way to get back to "today" after I've been scrolling around, other than to scroll around again.
  • I would like more control over the search radius. Better yet, I'd like control over the shape of the search region. I might attend a meet & greet event within 20 miles of home, but I work 40 miles from home and I might also attend a lunchtime event within a few miles of work. And I might attend a special event (a mega-event or perhaps Venona's FINAL ACTIVITY EVENT 2017) that is within 50 miles of home. But a search radius of 100 miles is overkill.
  • Sometimes the map shows me nothing I can recognize. I can zoom in/out using the scrollwheel on my mouse, but it would be nice to include some sort of visible controls for zooming in/out.
  • The calendar shows me this month and next month. There are local events scheduled for the month after that, but I have to use the "Search events" link to find them.

Thanks again!

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Nice!

How are the top 3 events selected for the calendar? On 8/27 there's an event 71 km from me (GC7AG22), but it doesn't show. The three listed are all farther away (113.6 km, 116.68 km, 134.55 km).

GC7AJKK doesn't show at all on my calendar on Sept 1. It's 51 km away. :lostsignal:

(I use this bookmarked link to search for events, if it helps you debug)

Ditto the request to customize the search radius. Most of the ones over 100 km / 62 miles away from me are in another country.

Edited by TriciaG
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That looks good, and will be very useful.

What with this and the recent Friends League table we now know why all that white space was left down the right hand side :-) 

 

FWIW  you should remove the full stop (period) from the hyperlink to the dashboard in the OP as clicking it results in a runtime error, and it's only a matter of time before somebody thinks something is broken.

 

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My only complaint is that the calendat floats (sinks?) down below my recent activity list.  It would be nice to have it immediately below "Premium Tools".  This is on my tablet in portrait mode.  In landscape it is high and to the right, which is good.

Edited by Gill & Tony
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I'm another one keen for the user to be allowed to customise the distance we want to be shown. Generally I don't want to go 100 miles for an event, but I might for a CITO and certainly a Mega. Giving us the option for setting each of these types (or at least, all 3 together) would be great. Actually, when you go to the Events Quick Search from the main geocaching home page, the default for that is 30 miles, so it seems odd that your calendar has more than tripled that.

I know there is an event on 10.4 miles form me on 20th August, but it's not showing at all on the calendar (nothing is for 20th). But clicking the "search events" link it's the first result that shows up - as it's the closest to home!

Another case in point - when I select 10th August, it shows me 3 Side Tracked 10th Anniversary events, ~17 miles, ~31 miles and ~40 miles away. It DOESN'T show me the event I hosted which was only ~10 miles from my home co-ords! Does it not show anything you own or attended?

Also, why limit the results panel to 3 when you select at date? To be most useful, it should show ALL events for that date within the given radius. 

So, a good idea which will be great once a few annoying bugs are ironed out.

Edited by cazmockett
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It's a nice additional feature but looks like it's buggy - An event GC797P1 is 39km from me but doesn't show up on Aug 21 (in fact I get no events on that day so I don't even see the '21').  

The event does show up if I click the 'search events' link below, but of course that 'search events' link only shows up if I click on a different date - when I click where '21' should be, the 'search events' link disappears!

if the browser window is narrower than about 1190 pixels, the events applet magically pops to the left and far bottom of the screen - way way down below all the log activity.  Doubt many people will ever find it there…

Have you thought about setting up a Beta Testers group and having loads of us from around the world all test out your new features for a week or two before general release?

Edited by sharant
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Also concur on these ideas:

* adjustable distance

* include any event where a Will Attend was posted (they may beyond the radius, but perhaps on a vacation with travel plans)

* also to the previous, highlight days (and/or events) where a Will Attend has been posted.

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Hey, nice! I would however also like to see a customisable distance. For tomorrow I get an event 128km away, which is a lot! Are the green days on the calendar those where I logged a will attend and the piggy pink ones those where I didn't? I just logged a 'will attend' on an event, thus yes, seems to be the case. Neat!

What does RSVP mean, btw?

Edited by terratin
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47 minutes ago, RuideAlmeida said:

 

It's french... Répondez s'il vous plaît meaning "Reply if you please".

D'oh!

I didn't think along those lines with the general dumbing down of the website (sorry, I'm so sorry!). Might be difficult to understand for non-French speakers, or if this is a commom expression in the US for people in the rest of the world. What about 'Attend'?

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17 minutes ago, terratin said:

What about 'Attend'?

 

I guess that in this case, "Will Attend" is the desired log.

It's one of those things that we can expect to see in a wedding invitation. :)

There are some other acronyms around... RIP, INRI, CV, QED, LGBoTP (Let's Get Back on Topic Please) etc. ;)

Edited by RuideAlmeida
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22 minutes ago, terratin said:

Might be difficult to understand for non-French speakers, or if this is a commom expression in the US for people in the rest of the world. 

16 minutes ago, RuideAlmeida said:

It's one of those things that we can expect to see in a wedding invitation. :)

 

It is a common expression in the US - not only on wedding invites but just about any type of invitation - typically you'll see RSVP and a phone number or name.  That means you are expected to let the host/hostess know whether or not you plan to attend so they have an idea of what/how many to expect.

Edited by CAVinoGal
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18 hours ago, The A-Team said:

Another suggestion: It would be great if events that I've logged as "Will attend" were highlighted in some way in the list, as well as the date highlighted on the calendar. That would make it easy at-a-glance to see what events are coming up that I need to remember to show up at. :laughing:

Hey there,

The event that you have logged a Will Attend on should be displaying a little calendar icon in the event details on the Events Widget. Let me know if it's not showing up for you and we'll get a bug entered.

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1 hour ago, terratin said:

Hey, nice! I would however also like to see a customisable distance. For tomorrow I get an event 128km away, which is a lot! Are the green days on the calendar those where I logged a will attend and the piggy pink ones those where I didn't? I just logged a 'will attend' on an event, thus yes, seems to be the case. Neat!

What does RSVP mean, btw?

Thanks for the feedback! We'll be changing this back to 'Will Attend' as we realize that RSVP may not translate appropriately for everyone. :) You'll see that change happen in the next few day or so.

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19 hours ago, Windstorm+ said:

Hey, that's cool! I think I like it.

Two things: I'm seeing up to 3 regular and/or CITO events per day (which I think is just fine, but you said it would be 2 events) and the Going Ape 2017 mega isn't showing up on 8/19, even though it's within my 100 mile radius.

Thanks for letting us know, Windstorm+. It's displaying the same for me. We'll be adjusting the priority order of events to show the Mega/Giga events first if there is one within the radius and there are other events that are closer to your home coords.

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If there are more events scheduled for a particular date than the system is configured to show (whether it shows 2 or 3 or some other number), what is the planned method

  1. to indicate there there are more events scheduled than shown, and
  2. to allow the user to access the full list of caches scheduled for that date?
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5 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Also concur on these ideas:

* adjustable distance

* include any event where a Will Attend was posted (they may beyond the radius, but perhaps on a vacation with travel plans)

* also to the previous, highlight days (and/or events) where a Will Attend has been posted.

Thanks for the feedback, thebruce0.

We'll discuss the adjustable distance option as a team - need to figure out some logistics behind that one.

Great idea to display an event outside of the radius that has a Will Attend or Attended on it - super useful for geotravelers! We have a ticket on the board to get this one implemented.

Days that have a Will Attend or Attended posted should be displaying in green on the calendar and have a little icon next to it in the list view. We are seeing some bug reports of the green shading not occurring for these events and will try to get it sorted out soon.

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6 minutes ago, niraD said:

If there are more events scheduled for a particular date than the system is configured to show (whether it shows 2 or 3 or some other number), what is the planned method

  1. to indicate there there are more events scheduled than shown, and
  2. to allow the user to access the full list of caches scheduled for that date?

If there are more than 3 events within the radius for a particular date then the 'Search events' is supposed to bring the user to the filtered search results that show them all event types. Soon we will be adding the radius (within 100mi/160km) and a sort order by ascending date to these results - at which point the user can change the filters to any radius they prefer.

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8 hours ago, cazmockett said:

I know there is an event on 10.4 miles form me on 20th August, but it's not showing at all on the calendar (nothing is for 20th). But clicking the "search events" link it's the first result that shows up - as it's the closest to home!

Another case in point - when I select 10th August, it shows me 3 Side Tracked 10th Anniversary events, ~17 miles, ~31 miles and ~40 miles away. It DOESN'T show me the event I hosted which was only ~10 miles from my home co-ords! Does it not show anything you own or attended?

Can you share the GC codes for these 2 issues, please? We'd love to get to the bottom of why some events aren't showing up on the calendar for people.

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11 minutes ago, Jayme H said:

If there are more than 3 events within the radius for a particular date then the 'Search events' is supposed to bring the user to the filtered search results that show them all event types. Soon we will be adding the radius (within 100mi/160km) and a sort order by ascending date to these results - at which point the user can change the filters to any radius they prefer.

It would be nice if there were some indication whether the three displayed events are all that are scheduled for that day, or whether the "Search events" link will turn up additional events that might be of interest.

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1 hour ago, Jayme H said:

Thanks for the feedback! We'll be changing this back to 'Will Attend' as we realize that RSVP may not translate appropriately for everyone. :) You'll see that change happen in the next few day or so.

Thanks a lot for your answer, Jayme. I'm looking forward to the change.

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2 hours ago, Jayme H said:

Hey there,

The event that you have logged a Will Attend on should be displaying a little calendar icon in the event details on the Events Widget. Let me know if it's not showing up for you and we'll get a bug entered.

I'm getting neither the green highlighted day nor an icon on the list for an event I logged as "Will attend" for tomorrow. It's GC79DQY, the first one in my list for August 19th (International Geocachin...). The screenshots below were taken in IE11, but I see the same thing in Firefox 55.0.2.

calendar1.pngcalendar2.png

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1 hour ago, Jayme H said:

If there are more than 3 events within the radius for a particular date then the 'Search events' is supposed to bring the user to the filtered search results that show them all event types. Soon we will be adding the radius (within 100mi/160km) and a sort order by ascending date to these results - at which point the user can change the filters to any radius they prefer.

I think what niraD meant is that if, for example, there are only two events shown, then you know that's all there is on that day. However, if there are three listed, there's no way to know at-a-glance whether there are only three events on that day or if there are more. You'd have to go to the full event search, sort by date, find the date in question, and see if there are any other events.

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The event calendar does not appear to count "will attend" logs on one's own event.  We're hosting an event tomorrow (GC79YQ6) and logged "Will attend," but that date still ain't green on the calendar.  Not like I really need the extra reminder on our own event, of course; just pointing it out.

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As I'm going to an event today I noticed one little niggle in usability.  Not sure how to solve this properly though. Maybe there isn't a solution.

When I click on today I see three events. I want to go tot he event page of the one I'm going to. Instead the little map (pretty good idea!) and the attend button shows up. so I have to click a second time to finally get to the event page. Like I said I don't have a clear solution to how to make this a bit less clicky,

And a thought: would it be possible to add temporary locations to the event calender (or for everything) for those people that travel a lot? Add the travel date range and location somewhere and events during that time are also displayed on the calender. Thinking further, this might also be cool for notifications on newly published caches (maybe using the existing settings) and other things.

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On ‎8‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 2:14 AM, terratin said:

...the little map (pretty good idea!)...

To be honest, I hadn't even stumbled on that feature until you mentioned it. I just figured that if you clicked on one of the events, that it would take you to its listing. It isn't obvious that clicking on it will do otherwise. Maybe there should be a little expand/collapse arrow indicating that clicking will expand rather than navigate you somewhere?

I just stumbled on another reason why I hadn't noticed this part of the feature. I often middle-click on links to open them in new tabs, rather than just clicking and not knowing if it will open in the current tab or in a new one. When you middle-click on one of the event links (before expanding and showing the map), it opens the listing in a new tab.

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Thank you to everyone who is using the new events calendar and providing feedback. There are a lot of great features and ideas that we are documenting and prioritizing to add/update in a follow-up iteration. We are looking into some of the sorting issues and will be giving Megas and Gigas additional priority when viewing the upcoming events on a specific day. Multiple people have requested that the distance should be configurable and I think there is a valid use case to consider so we will be looking into this, but I cannot commit to a timeline on that change yet.

As you might know there was a pretty major astronomical event yesterday so if we are slower to respond it isn't because we aren't listening!

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I really like the idea, and the intention behind the calendar on the dashboard page, however I found an shortcoming with it - it has not included my closest event on 31 August which is 10 miles away, but instead listing one 60 miles away

Here is a screenshot of my calendar for the events on 31st August, showing an event

599e68cadd79d_Eventcalendar.JPG.4cefaf17636170d96715aff2e016bd25.JPG

However there is another event much closer to me on that date which the calendar is not picking up GC7APZ5

599e68156ca46_BAD-derEvent.thumb.JPG.130578cc63b4ab2ad27d42ec8f1e4edf.JPG

Why is the closer event not being listed in the calendar, and should it be at the top of the listing as it is my closest event.

I hope this is a bug that can easily be resolved

Many Thanks

Edited by Boggin's Dad
Screen shots not included in original
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16 hours ago, Boggin's Dad said:

I really like the idea, and the intention behind the calendar on the dashboard page, however I found an shortcoming with it - it has not included my closest event on 31 August which is 10 miles away, but instead listing one 60 miles away

Here is a screenshot of my calendar for the events on 31st August, showing an event

599e68cadd79d_Eventcalendar.JPG.4cefaf17636170d96715aff2e016bd25.JPG

However there is another event much closer to me on that date which the calendar is not picking up GC7APZ5

599e68156ca46_BAD-derEvent.thumb.JPG.130578cc63b4ab2ad27d42ec8f1e4edf.JPG

Why is the closer event not being listed in the calendar, and should it be at the top of the listing as it is my closest event.

I hope this is a bug that can easily be resolved

Many Thanks

Thanks for the helpful, detailed bug information, Boggin's Dad. We've heard about this troublesome bug from a bunch of folks and are working to get it figured out. Hopefully we'll have a fix soon.

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There does not seem to be a rhyme or reason as to when dates turn green for events I've posted "Will Attend."

I posted "Will Attend" for three separate events in August: GC79DN7 on 11 August, GC79W4W on 15 August, and GC79YQ6 on 19 August.

Today I am seeing one green square on the calendar, on 11 August.

Yesterday I saw one green square on the calendar, for 15 August.

Other days I have seen zero green squares.

(As I pointed out above, I never did see a green square for our own event on 19 August.)

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Greetings! A new build has been released for the event widget to resolve some of the issues that have been reported, particularly with not showing events that are nearby. There were a few things going on, but mainly we were previously capping the number of events that were being returned so for some of you who are in areas with lots of events you were not seeing all of your events - in certain cases this affected nearby events more than others.

  • We are hiding archived events unless you logged a 'will attend' or 'attended'.
  • "RSVP" has been updated to "Will Attend"
  • We fixed an issue that was limiting the ability to display your friends who are attending (or attended) an event
  • Unrelated to event widget - Trackable Discovered logs are now being rendered properly again
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9 hours ago, HiddenGnome said:

Greetings! A new build has been released for the event widget to resolve some of the issues that have been reported, particularly with not showing events that are nearby. There were a few things going on, but mainly we were previously capping the number of events that were being returned so for some of you who are in areas with lots of events you were not seeing all of your events - in certain cases this affected nearby events more than others.

  • We are hiding archived events unless you logged a 'will attend' or 'attended'.
  • "RSVP" has been updated to "Will Attend"
  • We fixed an issue that was limiting the ability to display your friends who are attending (or attended) an event
  • Unrelated to event widget - Trackable Discovered logs are now being rendered properly again

Thanks for nice redesign :) now working fine...
It would be nice to be able to tell how many events (closest) I want to see 3-10 (max)... under calendar widget
But it's just an my opinion, that's not necessary ;)

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Thanks for the fixes. I'm now seeing a green box for a previous date where I attended an event, which wasn't working before. I don't have any upcoming Will attends at this time, so I can't test that part.

Personally, there are just a few enhancements that would elevate this to "perfect" level for me:

  • Allowing customization of the "nearby" distance
  • Having some indication of whether there are only three results on a date or if it's just displaying the top three of more results
  • Having some kind of expand/collapse indication to indicate that initial clicking on a result will expand to show a map, not link to the listing
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2 minutes ago, The A-Team said:

Thanks for the fixes. I'm now seeing a green box for a previous date where I attended an event, which wasn't working before. I don't have any upcoming Will attends at this time, so I can't test that part.

Thanks for the feedback, The A-Team. Glad to hear that it is indeed working more like what we expected. We will be chatting as a team about adding some more customizable options for the calendar widget soon. The feedback that we have been hearing from everyone here has been super helpful. Stay tuned!

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In addition to the customization of the search radius, and some indication of whether the three events shown are all that are scheduled for that date or just the first of many, I would also like to see the time of the event in the calendar widget.

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4 minutes ago, niraD said:

...I would also like to see the time of the event in the calendar widget.

Yep! We would LOVE to include that, as well. Unfortunately it's a bigger project than just adding it to the widget, as we don't currently have that information (we don't ask for it during the cache submission process). There is another team that is planning some improvements in that process and we have asked for that tidbit to be included. It would be a nice win for the calendar widget for sure.

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51 minutes ago, niraD said:

In addition to the customization of the search radius, and some indication of whether the three events shown are all that are scheduled for that date or just the first of many, I would also like to see the time of the event in the calendar widget.

I'd guess that including the time of the event would require a change to the Event Cache submission form, to include a field where the event owner notes the time.  Otherwise, how can the widget know the event's time?

 

Edited by noncentric
clarity
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10 minutes ago, noncentric said:

I'd guess that including the time of the event would require a change to the Event Cache submission form, to include a field where the event owner notes the time.  Otherwise, how can the widget know the event's time?

 

Yep. Jayme H pointed out that the DB doesn't currently have that information.

I've gotten used to our local Google calendar that shows events (which is maintained by a volunteer). It includes the times of the events. Thus, when I saw Groundspeak's new event calendar widget, I missed seeing the times of the events on the calendar, and mentioned it.

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On 8/18/2017 at 1:24 PM, The A-Team said:

I'm getting neither the green highlighted day nor an icon on the list for an event I logged as "Will attend" for tomorrow. It's GC79DQY, the first one in my list for August 19th (International Geocachin...). The screenshots below were taken in IE11, but I see the same thing in Firefox 55.0.2.

calendar1.pngcalendar2.png

Is this still happening for you? With the recent fixes we released I can't repro it anymore. Let me know if you are still seeing only pink/red on days that you have logged a 'Will Attend' or an 'Attend' for an event.

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On 8/30/2017 at 1:09 PM, Windstorm+ said:

I'm not seeing the event owner listed in the events calendar anymore. Under the event name, it says something like "by | 18.75 mi" (with a little direction arrow in front of the distance).

I'm also seeing something like what Windstorm+ described.

See image below.  For some events, the owner space is blank and the distance is moved far to the right. Maybe it's because the owners have an ampersand in their name, although an event on 9/3 shows up similarly and that CO does not have any special characters in their name. But it is odd.  @Jayme H you probably see a similar calendar to mine, so you could look at event on 8/12, 8/18, 8/19, 9/1, 9/3, 9/14, 9/23, 9/30, 10/11, and 10/12 for examples.  I saw this blank CO name on Firefox, Edge, and Chrome.

 

gc-eventcal.png

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4 minutes ago, noncentric said:

I'm also seeing something like what Windstorm+ described.

See image below.  For some events, the owner space is blank and the distance is moved far to the right. Maybe it's because the owners have an ampersand in their name, although an event on 9/3 shows up similarly and that CO does not have any special characters in their name. But it is odd.  @Jayme H you probably see a similar calendar to mine, so you could look at event on 8/12, 8/18, 8/19, 9/1, 9/3, 9/14, 9/23, 9/30, 10/11, and 10/12 for examples.  I saw this blank CO name on Firefox, Edge, and Chrome.

 

gc-eventcal.png

Hi @noncentric - thank you for the report. Previously the owner name was missing so we were working on adding it back in. Now the event owner name is being included, but our styling went a little sideways so it is being pushed down to a separate line and hidden in some cases. We've created a ticket and will be resolving it soon.

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5 hours ago, Jayme H said:

Is this still happening for you? With the recent fixes we released I can't repro it anymore. Let me know if you are still seeing only pink/red on days that you have logged a 'Will Attend' or an 'Attend' for an event.

Nope, I posted on Wednesday that it's working now and you already responded. :grin:

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On 9/1/2017 at 3:43 PM, The A-Team said:

Nope, I posted on Wednesday that it's working now and you already responded. :grin:

D'oh! :lol: Yeah, I just reread your post that I already responded to. LOL!

Would you believe me if I said that I was just being super duper extra thorough? Oy!

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