Instructions / How-to
The Application Holiday and Vacation Calendar is a full-year-view calendar application with comprehensive data about holiday dates and school schedules in many countries. It shows
- A list "Holidays" of all legal holidays in your country and region. The list can be extended by your choice of commemoration days which are observed in your own country as well as holidays or commemoration days from othe countries. You can also add further holidays to the application and to this list.
- A list "School" of school vacations / term breaks for your country and region, if there are fixed school schedules within your region. This applies to almost all European countries. You can add school vacations to the list, e.g. vacations that apply only to your particular school.
- A list "Personal" of personal events which you can enter yourself. Events can be assigned to different categories with different graphical representations in the calendar views.
- Three calendar views with an overview of the whole year in portrait mode or an overview of half a year in landsape mode. The calendar views are scrollable from the beginning of the current year until the end of next year. These three views show different information as described below.
The calendar view "School" shows all holidays from the list "Holidays" and all school vacations from the list "School" as well as your choice of events from the "Personal" list .
Non-working legal holidays are shown as a red number. Special days like commemoration days on which you normally have to work are shown as a blue number. Days without any special events are shown as a black number. There are more colors for your personal events which you have added yourself. Single-day events are always represented by the color of the day number.
School vacations are shown by a gray background in the Holidays calendar. There are more background colors for your personal events. Multi-day events are always represented by a background color.
Your personal vacations can be added as personal events which have to be defined as multi-day events with the category "Vacation" They are represented by a red frame in the calendar view. It is possible to define a single day of vacation by creating a multi-day event which is only one day long.
The calendar view "Season" shows in which time periods many schools have vacations or term breaks. It can be expected that these time periods many people with children will go on vacation and travelling will be expensive. Days when almost all schools have vacations are displayed with a red background. Days when almost no schools have Vacations have a green background. There are intermediate colors light green, yellow and orange.
Information about school vacation is available only for countries where there are fixed school schedules at least per region, i.e. these data are available for all European countries included in the app as well as Australia and Canada. School vacation dates in the US and the UK vary between small regions or even schools, so this can not be evaluated here. If you live in the US this feature may still be useful to you if you travel to Europe one day.
The calendar view "Personal" shows your choice of events from the "Personal" list.
You can add new events to your "Personal" list with the "+" button in the heading of the "Personal" list and of the calendar views. New events will be shown in the calendar views as you configure them.
All calendar views show the current and next year, you can scroll down. That means, when we have 2010, the years 2010 and 2011 will be shown automatically.
The calendar views also show the week numbers in landscape format. There was not enough space on the screen for them in portrait mode.
List views
The list view "Holidays" shows your selection of holidays. By default it shows the legal holidays in the country / region which you have selected, i.e. the days when shops will normally be closed. These days are always displayed in red. You can add more special days in the settings menu or remove any of the list entries. You can add holidays and commemoration days observed in your own country or from any other country supported by the app. Maybe you would like to celebrate all of the different countries´ Father´s Days which we have in Europe. These days are shown in black in ths list and with a blue number in the calendar views.
When you start the app the Holidays list scrolls automatically so that the next holidays are visible. It shows the holiday dates for the current and next year. Holiday dates are calculated by the app, so this list will not expire even without any updates.
Personal events that you add can be assigned to the categories "Public Holiday" (red) or "Special Day" (blue), among others. Events from these categories are also displayed in this list. You can use this feaure in order to add holidays that are missing, e.g. because they apply only to a single city.
The list view "School" shows the dates of school vacations and term breaks. Data are available and will be maintained for all countries where there are fixed school schedules at least per region. If you live in a country where there are no fixed school schedules, the list will be empty in the beginning. You can add your own school vacation dates by defining personal events with the category "School Vacation". These events will also be schown in this list.
School vacation dates are always shown for the current and next years if data are available. Data for future years will be provided with updates of the app.
The list view "Personal" shows all events which you have entered yourself, ordered by date. you can edit or delete events here by tapping on them. You can create new events by tapping on the "+" button.
Adding Personal Events
You can specify for each event a title, date, category, repeat it every year and have it displayed in the holiday calendar, personal calendar, or both. The date can be set with the "One Day" button for single day events or with the "From" / "Till" buttons for multi-day events. Depending on the decision for a single day or multi-day event, the app will offer you different categories to choose for the event. If you need a multi-day category for a single day, you can define a multi-day event which is only one day long.
Single day events can be assigned to the categories "Public Holiday", "Special Day" and four personal categories. They are represented in the calendar views by the color of the day number. You can rename the personal categories and change their colors with the "(+)" buttons.
Multi-day events can be assigned to the categories "Vacation", "School Vacation" and another four personal categories. They are represented in the calendar views by the background color of the day number. Vacation is shown by a red frame around the days. You can rename the personal categories and change their colors with the "(+)" buttons.
With this graphical representation of the events, the calendars can show a single-day event, a multi-day event and vacation on the same day.
Settings
The settings menu is what you see when you start the app for the first time, because it makes sense to choose your country first. Here you can also set the date format and the ordering of the weekdays in the calendar views. There is a more button which opens a menu where you can select the weekdays which should be displayed in red (Sunday by default) and choose the background color for the calendar views.
When you tap on "Done", you see a menu of holidays which are relevant for your country. Here, you can choose holidays to be added to your list and calendars. Further down in the menu there are also holidays from the other countries supported by the app. Tap on the "(+)" buttons to see them.
You can reach the settings menu later again with the globe button which appears on the left hand side in the heading of the lists "Holidays" and "School".