QuSheet, Schedules, PDAs and Mobile Phones

QuSheet can be used to produce conference schedules visible on hand-held screens as in the example here (best viewed on a small screen).

The presentation below explains, in order, the output produced, the input required, and all the customisation that can be made.

After viewing this presentation you will know everything that you need to know in order to start producing your own PDA/Mobile Conference Schedules.

When you are ready to download and start customising the example file, right click and save the following link:

http://www.qusheet.com/examples/schedule.qus.xml

You will need to view this page on a non-handheld screen to see the presentation.

For other presentations:

Click here to see QuSheet transforming your data into HTML (browser friendly) output.

Click here to see QuSheet in use.

Transcript »

« Transcript

Introduction »

Output »

Input »

Customisation »

Generation »

Purchase »

« Introduction

Thank you for taking the time to consider QuSheet as the windows tool you will use to produce your conference schedules so that they can be viewed on small, hand-held, screens.

I have structured this presentation in the following way: First, I describe QuSheet�s output, with particular reference to the schedule example, that you�ve hopefully already seen. Second, I show you how you can tailor this example by getting your own conference data into QuSheet and by making styling changes such as modifying the colours and date formats. Finally, I describe how you can download and run QuSheet so that you can get your first conference schedule produced straight away.

« Output

Here, in front of you, is the schedule example web page, sized and zoomed inside a browser in a way which simulates how it would look on a mobile phone. As you can see, the various little pages of information have been linked together, forwards and backwards, using these little chevrons.

This system is ideal for display on small screens but, as you can imagine, not so terribly good on large ones. If I open the same file on a normal browser window you�ll see what I mean.

Ordinarily QuSheet will produce output suitable for large screens, as well as small ones and hard-copy, all within the same file. I have such a file open here on another tab. As you can see, in this situation, the schedule is presented a little differently, with the chevrons opening up extra levels of detail underneath the relevant lines, and then closing them up like this.

The Opera browser, which I�m using here, and which is also available for hand-held devices, allows me to switch between normal screen and small-screen output like this.

Unfortunately, at present, most PDAs and mobile phone browsers do not support this type of operation, and basically always show the default view. For that reason QuSheet has a switch to get it to generate the small-screen output as the default for the page, which is what I showed you originally.

I know from looking at your web sites that you already have attractive and sophisticated web pages set up to display your conference schedules on normal sized PC screens, so I imagine you will only want to use QuSheet to produce the small-screen version of your schedule. The other option is, of course, there if you want it.

Hard copy display, incidentally, is unaffected by any of this. If someone chooses to print out QuSheet�s schedule they will see something like this.

« Input

Moving on to QuSheet itself, once you have downloaded and licenced it (which you can do with an evaluation licence if you like), you will be presented with QuSheet�s normal windows first page like this.

Assuming you�ve also downloaded the example from the web site (and I will be showing you how to do all of this later) you will also be able to open that file from your QuSheet directory like this - at which point you will be greeted by a rather frightening looking table, with lots of tabs and options and so on.

Happily, since you�re just going to be modifying this example by adding your own data and style changes, you don�t have to worry about all this complexity at all. All you need to do to get started is to go to the Tables tab under Workbook, and then begin by looking at the _schedule table over here.

Note the underscore in front of the name, by the way. I have deliberately named any table or style which you might want to change, with an underscore, just to make it easier for you to home in on what you might want to modify.

As you will see later, all the information in here can come across from other applications, but let me just start by telling you what you�ve got in front of you in case you simply want to edit it the entries for yourself by hand.

This _schedule table contains, as you might expect, everything in your schedule. The first column has the name of the event, which doesn�t have to be unique (as you can see I have lunch in twice), unless you want to provide different details using the _details table (which I�ll now briefly go back to over here).

In this table the X column (which I�ll just expand so that you can see it) corresponds to either the Value or Speaker column of the _schedule table that I was just showing you. The value entry here defines the extra details that you might want to show for an event or speaker. Clearly if you�ve named two of your events exactly the same way then QuSheet will just put out exactly the same details � which is fine if that is what you want.

The details table has these details, and they cross-reference using this X column to the _schedule table, which I�ll go back to now.

As well as the event name, we have here a date, room, speaker and start and end times. The only reason I�ve called these last two columns T_BEGIN and T_END, by the way, is just to get them to appear together in the right order at the end of the table.

Anyway, you can edit any of these entries, like so, for example, (Use click on an arrow to duplicate a line or click on an arrow to insert a blank line) or you can use a right-click to pull up specific editing windows, like date and time. As you can see, where there is no speaker associated with an activity there is a little dash here. You do need to remember to put that in.

Apart from the _schedule table and the _details table which you�ve already seen, what else is there. Well, you have a _highlight table, which basically contains the name of any _schedule event which you want highlighted in a different colour (typically for lunches and coffee breaks and things). After that you just have two, straight forward, single entry tables. One describes the venue which appears at the top of the web page. And the other provides some instructions. This one can be particularly useful to you if you want to put out a little bulletin message at the top of your schedule which your delegates will be able to see on their mobiles and PDAs as the conference goes on.

Finally, the title of the conference is set in the Generation tab over here and that�s basically everything you need to change by way of your data rather than styles (which I�ll get into in a minute).

As I said earlier, QuSheet supports two ways of importing and exporting your data to other applications. I will demonstrate the first of these and then briefly touch upon the second.

Up here under the Edit Menu there are three slightly specialised Copy and Paste operations. In order to demonstrate how this works I�ll do a Copy entire table now and then navigate over to Excel.

Here I will paste. Then change Excel�s columns a bit so that you can see the table properly. Then I�ll change something. Select it all again. Copy it. Go back to QuSheet. And do a Paste replace. And that�s it � nice and easy.

Just as a little note let me tell you that QuSheet bases its copy and paste operations on the table that you see in front of you and that since you can change what is displayed here in various ways (like changing or rearranging the columns) this mechanism is something that you can affect, though it�s not something I�m going to go into now. The QuSheet web site, incidentally, has lots of tutorials showing you how these sort of things can be done.

And as a second note, let me point out to you that the paste operation is undoable, like this, but that we�ll leave it *done* for now so that I can demonstrate how these changes work. All these little modifications that I am doing in this presentation, incidentally, are undoable in the same way.

That�s one way you can get things in and out. The other way is to use XML. Like I said before, this isn�t something I�m going to go into in great detail here. There is another presentation, linked to just below this one here which shows an example of XML data being imported and exported. All I will tell you now is that there are three menu entries here under File which allow you to export and import XML data, and that the export function, in particular, writes out a Schema Definition file as well as well as the data. Those of you who know about these sorts of things will know that this is the file which is necessary in order to have other applications work with and provide this XML data.

« Customisation

The final part about customising your example comes down to Styles, which are over here on the right hand side of the Workbook area.

Now QuSheet is a very versatile product with a lot of functionality controlling how your output comes out. For this example, however, I have put all the styling information that you might want to change in styles beginning with an underscore, and I�ll go over them all now.

To start with the _date style has, in its default area, a specifier indicating how a date should be displayed. You can change this if you like using this drop-down list.

The _time style, as you can see, does something similar for times, but note that you will need to select the times options based on seconds.

Over here, the style called _general schedule colours defines the three colours that are used in the three items displayed in the schedule, i.e. the times, the room and the speaker. Clicking on a colour or a colour area brings up this big grid to let you choose whatever colour you want to use. Like so.

The _highlighted schedule line style, under the default tab, defines how the lines you have chosen to highlight should be displayed. Whilst the _schedule line even and _schedule line odd styles provide the background colours for the alternating normal schedule lines that are displayed.

The _speaker details style, under the Explanation tab in this case, sets the background colour to use when displaying details about the speaker. And the _schedule details style does the same for the details of the event, though note this is currently set to leave the colour unchanged (i.e. at its default).

Indeed, as I�m sure you will have noticed with these styles, they don�t tend to specify very much. This is because the whole style system is based on over-riding whatever has been specified under a special style called �z default�. The way all of this overriding takes place is well beyond the scope of this presentation however I will just indicate to you that the Background and Foreground colours under the Default tab under �z default� determine the background and foreground colours which are used on the whole page, so this is where you need to go to change those. And that�s it � that�s really everything you need to know to customise this example for your own use.

« Generation

Once you�ve made whatever changes you want to, navigate over to the Sheet tab here at the top, select either a normal sheet or a pda one (the only difference, as you will see, being here in the Generation Override tab), hit the Generate button and watch the wheels go round.

How long the generation process will take depends on your system and the size of your schedule. On my machine with this example it takes about 30 seconds or so.

Since this file is called �schedule� and the sheet is called �pda� QuSheet will generate an html file called schedule.pda and put it in the same directory as the input file (probably your QuSheet folder). Once generation has finished, the view button here can be used to open up your preferred browser (which you can set under the preferences / resources tab) to view it.

And here you can see the new file, with all the changes we have put in. Different date, different styling, and so on.

« Purchase

So what do you need to do now to get yourself a copy of QuSheet and start working on your own schedule.

First of all, from this presentation page here you can navigate to the Buy Now page and follow the instructions for downloading, licencing and running the product. You don�t actually have to buy a licence now if you don�t want to. You could get yourself an evaluation licence instead if you like, which will last you until the end of the next calendar month.

Assuming you do all this, the first thing QuSheet will do when it runs up is to create a QuSheet folder for you under your MyDocuments or Documents directory.

If you then navigate back to this presentation page you can right-click here and save yourself a copy of the example file - and that�s it - you�re ready to start. If you do have any problems, please don�t hesitate to get in touch. Thank you very much for listening.