Day at a Glance: time-aware enhancement with dynamic now-line

[joshcoolman]

Summary

Enhance the Day at a Glance experiment to be time-aware with a dynamic schedule, live now-line, and partial color fill on the current hour's event bar.

Changes

• Replace static events with 9am-5pm workday schedule (8 events, no gaps)
• Add today's date to header
• Dynamic now-line that tracks current time (hidden outside 9-17)
• Auto-mark past rows with dimmed styling
• Partial color fill on current hour's event bar (gray above line, color below)
• Accessibility improvements for checkboxes
• Hydration-safe time initialization

Files

• app/day-at-a-glance/page.tsx
• app/day-at-a-glance/styles.css

[joshcoolman]

Retrospective

Key Learnings

• The interaction between the now-line and the event bar's partial color fill is the most visually interesting part of this widget. Filling every hour slot (no gaps) ensures the effect is always visible during work hours.
• CSS linear-gradient with a dynamic percentage is an effective way to show progress within a fixed-height element without needing a separate overlay div.
• Initializing time state to a safe default (-1) rather than new Date() avoids hydration mismatches in Next.js client components.

Implementation Details

• 8 workday events (9am-5pm) with unique colors and SVG icons
• useEffect + setInterval(60s) drives the now-line position and partial bar fill
• Now-line position: (hour - 9) * 100 + (minute / 60) * 100 + 2 (2px offset for visual alignment)
• Current hour bar uses inline linear-gradient(to bottom, gray fillPct%, color fillPct%) so color appears below the now-line
• Past hours get .past class for dimmed text and gray bars

Potential Future Improvements

• Events with variable durations (30min, 2hr blocks)
• Click-to-expand event details
• Smooth transition/animation on the gradient fill
• Persist checkbox state to localStorage

Testing Notes

• Production build verified, no errors
• Visual alignment of now-line to color bar tuned with pixel offset
• Hydration mismatch fixed by deferring time state to useEffect
• Checkbox accessibility verified (role, aria-checked, keyboard support)

[joshcoolman]

Implementation completed and verified.