iCal 1.5.1

The iCal update brings some welcome improvements, but it doesn’t go far enough.

• It’s faster, but still sluggish.
• It finally supports timed events that span multiple days, and it can now show start times in month view. It does not show end times, however.
• Gone is the inspector that always opened split between my two screens and that seemed to want to float above whatever I was looking at. Replacing it is a drawer that stays out of the way, but whose width makes iCal unusable on an iBook screen. You can’t hide the Calendars pane, to see more of the calendar, either.
• Typing dates and times has become reasonably straightforward (iCal no longer fights you), though the drawer uses non-standard text fields in the style of Address Book.
• There’s a new application-modal dialog box that looks like it’s drawer-modal. If something non-standard was really necessary, Apple would have done well to borrow from Claris Organizer.
• Some, but not all, of iCal now respects the Graphite appearance.
• There are now keyboard commands for changing the view and moving to adjacent days, weeks, and months.
• You can now mail events and to-dos, though only using Apple Mail.
• iCal still can’t display all the text in crowded calendars. Printing is even worse, especially if you have to-do items.