So maybe the right solution to this problem is as follows:
- Keep the existing calendar mostly as is except for the coloring. This would be the "macro view". Days would either have no color (to indicate no events) or a color (to indicate one or more events). The calendar would only show one color over all days and it could be part of the site layout. So if I choose a canned layout that consists of mostly blue, the "events on that calendar day" color would be blue. Hovering and clicking on a single day could be retained as is.
- Add a new "detail view" that shows you something like a traditional calendar detail view. This would be a one month view that shows all of the details. This view would open in a separate window.
I did some looking around and most calendaring systems use either a detail view or a combination of the macro and detail views (Outlook is a great example of this). For the detail view, you could display each event with an area that corresponds to its size
as in this image. However, that might not work so hot for a month view, so you could simply do an entry on each day regardless of event length. An example of that is
here (PDF): full day events are a stripe across the day while timed events are just noted as <category color><time><event name>.
I think I like this better than my original striping request because it gives you a much better view of things.
Or you could add a single new color field that shows up on days that have multiple events.
I think in general if you have multiple days, with multiple events ... then expecting a single 150x150 pixel box to immediately tell everyone what is going on is expecting too much. At some point people have to be willing to look deeper themselves.
The idea of having a new page for a more detailed view of the week (for example) makes the most sense to me.
