I just spotted a story on Ars Technica announcing that Google is rolling out a new calendar design and, checking my Google Calendar, found the promised ‘use new calendar’ button towards the top right of the screen. So I pressed it and…

In some ways, it looks very different from what I was used to on the desktop, although it is immediately recognisable as a web-based calendar app. On the other hand, it doesn’t feel too strange as it deliberately uses a lot of the design cues from the mobile app and I’ve been using that for a long time too. Does it make any real improvement? I think the answer is going to be yes but it comes in subtle forms. For example, I don’t recall that I could previously view a year at a time – if I could, I didn’t realise and resorted to jumping month by month. Clicking an appointment is also improved, popping up a more informative summary of the event.

I expect there will be other things too – they might even all be wonderfully gentle like this, enhancing the experience rather than making me feel like I’m learning a brand new tool. If you use Google Calendar, I don’t think you have anything to lose by looking for the button and clicking on it.