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So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

roberto.open-lab.com

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Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#11

Post by izak30 »

qeorge wrote: post #4
btilly wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

I do, but I also like the option of a good date picker. Ideally a text input with a calender icon next to it, instead of a calendar that automatically shows on focus.

Either that, or one that opens the datepicker, but remains focused on the input, and hides the datepicker on blur.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#12

Post by angumagu »

What problems does this new approach solve? I see one that it creates: I can't see the whole month at once, so I have to take extra action to get to a date. I completely lose the spatial view of the grid which, among other things, helps me find a date when I don't know the day, and find a day when I don't know the date.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#13

Post by jeduan »

ktsmith wrote: post #8
btilly wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

The problem with all the date pickers that take text input is that they can't differentiate between 03-05-2010 being in March or May. I worked on some software for a company doing federal compliance consulting for employee hiring processes and requirements. We found that most people don't read (MM-DD-YYYY) type notifiers most of the time and immigrants were most likely to write dates as DD-MM-YYYY where as those born…

Did you test about asking the people to enter the date as ISO yyyy-mm-dd ? I'm not raised in the US and am usually confused of the meaning of some dates, however stating the year first makes it always understandable.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#15

Post by aquadoctorbob »

btilly wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

Thanks for the link. That's useful.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#16

Post by btilly »

cschneid wrote: post #5
btilly wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

I type rather fast as well, but I find dates awkward in ways that a picker solves. First, the mechanics of typing dates requires slashes. But also, it requires knowledge, like "what the hell is today" so I can then work out "what is the date of next saturday". Date pickers do all that work for you. Fuzzy text is fun, and can solve some of those problems as well, but is less intuitive (what is accepted, what isn't).

The interface I generated lets you type in "next saturday" and offers to autocorrect it to the right format for submission. You are responsible for the final version being right.

That struck me as a reasonable compromise.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#17

Post by btilly »

ktsmith wrote: post #8
btilly wrote: post #3

Am I the only person who likes to be able to type in a flexible date format and have it autocorrect that to a known date? (I set this up for an internal work tool using http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

The problem with all the date pickers that take text input is that they can't differentiate between 03-05-2010 being in March or May. I worked on some software for a company doing federal compliance consulting for employee hiring processes and requirements. We found that most people don't read (MM-DD-YYYY) type notifiers most of the time and immigrants were most likely to write dates as DD-MM-YYYY where as those born…

If the final date you will get is displayed to the user, then the user has the opportunity to fix those errors.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#18

Post by isleyaardvark »

mcav wrote: post #10
ktsmith wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with all the date pickers that take text input is that they can't differentiate between 03-05-2010 being in March or May. I worked on some software for a company doing federal compliance consulting for employee hiring processes and requirements. We found that most people don't read (MM-DD-YYYY) type notifiers most of the time and immigrants were most likely to write dates as DD-MM-YYYY where as those born…

A possible fix for ambiguous dates: When you detect an ambiguous date, prompt the user for the one they intended before allowing them to continue filling out the form.

That would be 12 days per month, about a third of all dates would result in a blocking prompt. Eek.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#19

Post by ktsmith »

jeduan wrote: post #13
ktsmith wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with all the date pickers that take text input is that they can't differentiate between 03-05-2010 being in March or May. I worked on some software for a company doing federal compliance consulting for employee hiring processes and requirements. We found that most people don't read (MM-DD-YYYY) type notifiers most of the time and immigrants were most likely to write dates as DD-MM-YYYY where as those born…

Did you test about asking the people to enter the date as ISO yyyy-mm-dd ? I'm not raised in the US and am usually confused of the meaning of some dates, however stating the year first makes it always understandable.

Most people ignored any note about what format the date needed to be entered in. We also found that many people were confused by the ISO format, or were simply irritated by it. The solution presented above has eliminated the most errors and seen the least number of complaints for us.

Re: So hard to have a date: js calendars review. New jquery calendar-picker

#20

Post by ktsmith »

btilly wrote: post #17
ktsmith wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with all the date pickers that take text input is that they can't differentiate between 03-05-2010 being in March or May. I worked on some software for a company doing federal compliance consulting for employee hiring processes and requirements. We found that most people don't read (MM-DD-YYYY) type notifiers most of the time and immigrants were most likely to write dates as DD-MM-YYYY where as those born…

If the final date you will get is displayed to the user, then the user has the opportunity to fix those errors.

The end user will only know there is an error if you reformat the date to say something like "March 5, 2010." We are essentially filling out federal forms which require the date to be entered MM/DD/YYYY and council advised that the user must be presented with what is essentially an electronic version of the form for validation. That means they have to be presented with a format, that if they didn't read the instructions, would be wrong still. We already determined that the users were not reading the format prompts so this doesn't actually work.
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