1.) Fully display the graphical image capable for all workouts when there are multiple activities (workouts) scheduled in a day. Presently, only the first workout displayed gets the full graphical representation. Sometimes I get around that by assigning my TR workout a time to be sure it appears first, say before a strength workout or an afterwork group ride.
Examples: Here’s a hypothetical day where I haven’t forced the order by assigning times and my morning TR workout is appearing second to a Monday Night Ride (MNR). Notice, the blue interval bar chart is not displayed for the TR workout Pope.
In general I think that’s both a bad idea and bad form. A web app that can’t handle certain devices can only cause frustration and confusion. It’s fine to degrade the view (see the difference between the calendar on a phone vs iPad), but to take it out altogether?
I think maybe you’re misinterpreting what Nate is saying.
I think he is saying that if you go to www.trainerroad.com on your mobile device, they will no longer support a calendar there. The calendar will remain on the app on mobile devices.
Please don’t.
I think the reason few people use it is whatever the reverse of induced demand is: the layout is, hmmm, not very good. And the way it detects whether you are on a mobile device is also not great. I type this post on a 13.3” iPad Pro, and when I activate the sidebar in Safari, the layout is barely usable. A lot of functions also assume that you are using a mouse (e. g. functionality is exposed when the cursor hovers over it, something you can’t do with a finger and touch).
Regarding new functionality:
Design and usability
IMHO it’d be a mistake to port the web calendar to the desktop app. A good desktop calendar looks nothing like a web calendar. My impression of TR’s strategy is that you want the web calendar to be the calendar that is fully featured, and then you port that over. That means your design will not work well everywhere. E. g. right-clicking is not supported, yet it is expected that you use a computer with a traditional a mouse cursor. That completely breaks with all conventions. If I can drag-and-drop, I expect to be able to right-click and have dialogs appear. Conversely, if I am on a mobile device, I expect full functionality.
The current layout doesn’t work well, unless you go fullscreen. (I am going to venture a guess, and this was developed by someone who grew up on Windows.) Even on fullscreen, the layout is barely usable on a 13.3” screen.
Note that the names of the workouts are cut off. When I activate the sidebar, only the very first letter shows up.
If you do more than one workout in a day, then ordering is random and not chronological. Compare the entries for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: on Wednesday, the Evening ride is listed first, followed by the Morning ride and then the Afternoon ride. On Thursday, is Afternoon —> Morning, on Friday, the order is flipped.
Scrolling works horribly: I’d often inadvertently scroll and end up a few months ahead or a few months in the past. There should be a way to return to the current week quickly.
New functionality
Offer full functionality in all calendars. Unless I am missing something, currently, none of the calendars offer full functionality. E. g. choosing alternates works horribly on the web calendar, and works best in the app (I use the iOS app on an iPad, occasionally on an iPhone). However, annotations and the few bits of performance analytics are only found in the web calendar and are not accessible via the iOS app. Moving workouts around works on the web calendar but is not supported on the iOS apps. This is a mess. I need to switch calendars for different tasks.
On touch devices, some functionality is not available as the functions are only exposed to the user when the mouse hovers over them. An example are the +TSS and delete icons that appear when you hover the cursor near the bottom of a workout. A lot of laptops have touch screens, so this impacts quite a few PC users, too. Other people use iPads or iPhones.
Get rid of the Preview Adaptations dialogs. The way adaptations are handled is just wrong: essentially, adaptations are not optional. Even when you refuse them, AT will suggest them again and again. These dialogs are a huge nuisance.
Start the week on an arbitrary day. I reckon a significant share of users will want to start weeks on, say, Wednesdays, because they work shifts or whatnot. So the training week should also start on Wednesdays.
Distinguish different workout types by colors and not just icons.
Would love to be able to auto-import my strength and condition, yoga etc workouts from the Wahoo SYSTMX platform. Even if it’s via another app or platform (strava, garmin etc). Probably not going to happen though.
Please add a “refresh” button on the calendar. At least in Safari, the calendar view doesn’t update automatically if I have it open. That is: I’m on the calendar view in Safari, I do a workout, I come back to the computer after the workout, and the calendar view doesn’t show that I did a workout until I reload the calendar view.
Enable you to keep the same workout/day selection when redoing plans. ie, if I move one of the usual “hard” rides from the default at Wednesday to Monday when initially setting up the plan, when I refresh the plan, it would be nice for that detail to be automatically remembered and not have to redo it again.
Show the career levels on the calendar screen.
More prominently (color shading?) show the start of a new block/plan.
Umm, seriously? What lunatics think the week starts on Sunday?? Crazy talk.
It would be nice one could see a snipped with the description (and maybe bigger graph, although less important) we see on 3) right at the calendar view.
Personal for it would be appriciated if you could see in the calender when following a plan in what state you are in the plan (e.g recovery week).
Also want to see the workout graph even if the workout been set to outdoors, now I only see the graph for indoor training. many thanks and keep up the good work…
By „mobile“ you mean just small phone screens and not tablet / iPad, correct?
Make the whole illness / holiday / „ease me back into training plan“ progress (=the conversation between calendar and my training plan) more intuitive.
Would love to see a rolling 7 day TSS rather than specific date base. ie on any given day I can see what my average TSS has been for the last 7 days.
I’m a shift worker and no two weeks are the same, I often have to move a workout from one week to the next which ends up showing a very light TSS week or a very heavy TSS week.
I have had a bit more of a think on the subject. In my mind, the question is: what is the purpose of rebuilding the calendar.
The way I read @Nate_Pearson’s post is that TR wants to use the web calendar as a basis for its other platforms. IMHO that is not the right goal. I don’t think you can make a calendar that works well on all platforms, the “desktop” web, the “mobile” web, (mouse-centric) desktop apps and (touch-centric) mobile apps. What should be the purpose of the web calendar?
Even the distinction between “desktop” and “mobiles” web seems like something from the year 2010: there is just one web, and websites should adjust dynamically. Also, do you want a web app akin to Google’s web-based word processor with its own menu bar, support for right clicks, etc.? Or do you want something that feels more like a web page?
Right now TR athletes are forced to use the web calendar for certain functionality, and forced to use the apps for other functions. That’s the worst of all worlds. However, it feels as if TR wants me to use the web calendar. E. g. many years ago it was possible to check my power numbers during intervals in the app and leave a note. I use that functionality religiously after all workouts.
So question to the TR team (and you don’t need to answer in public):
Should the preferred calendar be the web? Why?
Should the web calendar feel like an app (such as the GSuite apps)? Or do you want something that feels like a web page? (I would advise against a hybrid, because that completely breaks with conventions and users don’t know what to expect.)
What calendar should users use to access what functionality? As in, what is the official TR way to use calendaring?
Do you plan to introduce fully featured calendars to e. g. the mobile apps?
What about missing features in the web and the other calendars? Are users expected to figure out that they need to use e. g. the web calendar in conjunction with the app calendar? What functionality is a must for which platform? How should users know that extra functionality is available on other platforms? (E. g. I wouldn’t know about notes if TR hadn’t had it in prior versions of the app.)
Are you basing that decision on convenience/necessity for you (e. g. because you don’t think you have the person power to program several calendars optimized for each platform)? If it is the latter, I am not sure it is worth trying to replace the calendar and instead I would invest the energy elsewhere.
Reminds me of the UI rework couple years ago that started with similar vision but ended in multiple overhauls and took way longer than expected. Not sure I’d like that if you could spend those developers on other cool things
I actually read Nate’s question differently: they would start with the web version, but the goal is to get to parity between the web / desktop and app versions. I’m all for this goal, and think this should be v1 of the redone calendar in React. Once you have parity, then start adding new functionality
I don’t think we have a different reading: the plan as I understand it is to reach feature parity by first rewriting the web calendar and then port the new web calendar to the desktop. It seems that there are no plans to port the rewritten calendar to the mobile apps, though.
Where did you get that interpretation? I read it as the web calendar wouldn’t work if accessed via a mobile device. To access the calendar via a mobile device you would have to utilize the calendar in the mobile app
The ability to schedule recurring events, over a set period. IE: “Tuesday night worlds”
The ability to schedule events with the same type, priority, duration and intensity (but different names) without either a) starting from scratch or b) copying an event holus bolus and changing the name.
The entry of events is clunky. The drop-down menus for ‘type’ are hard to use, even on a desktop with a mouse, and the error messages that pop up when you tab past sections are annoying.
The ability to enter ‘intensity’ before duration.
This may be off-topic, but the ‘intensity’ of a planned race is difficult to estimate. It’s fine if it’s a time trial where the intensity is consistent, but how do you estimate the intensity of a road race? It might be super chill for hte first 2 hours but madhouse after that.
