The new data detectors feature in Leopard is awesome!

I just got an HTML e-mail flyer for an upcoming concert in my city. Apple Mail’s data detectors were able to pick out the date of the concert, in German no less. The visual cue is a dotted line around the recognized piece of information plus a drop down menu triangle:

The menu offers commands based on the type of data, in this case actions that make sense with a date, such as creating an iCal entry. That was exactly what I wanted. Choosing this command pops up the iCal edit dialog right next to the data:

The dialog is pre-filled with useful defaults, obviously the detected date but also the e-mail’s subject as event title.

Since there was no time next to the date, the detector suggested an all-day event. I unchecked that and set the correct time. That was the only work required to get the finished calendar entry:

But check out the event’s location field which is also pre-filled correctly, how did that happen?

It turns out that the e-mail message also contains an address further down on the page, an address that the data detector system was able to recognize:

The detector used this address as event location, and in this case it happens to be the correct address for the concert venue. Since iSync is also running, the event was transferred to my mobile phone automatically. This is the kind of integration and technology that makes life a little bit easier...

A nice detail: Take another look at the third screenshot. It shows a link back to the e-mail message in the event’s URL field. Clicking this link opens the message in Mail. This is very convenient because I don’t have to hunt down the message in my inbox if I want to get back to it in a hurry to check some details of the concert.

Slightly off topic: The tool tip for this URL demonstrates an interesting feature:

I always wanted a way to link to e-mail messages, for examples from within the OmniOutliner files that I use to keep track of my projects at work. It seems that I can simply use the message: URL scheme with the message’s “Message-ID” header field.

Finally a note about a feature which I really loved in Tiger’s iCal, but which seems to be gone in Leopard: The ability to change numeric values like dates and times with the mouse wheel. You used to be able to click a day or an hour/minute value and adjust it with the mouse wheel, that was a very quick and precise way to fine-tune these numbers. I really hope they put that back in.

I also hate it that double-clicking an event does not open it in edit mode, I have to click yet another button, or use Cmd-E on the event.