Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Asking for a date of birth (2013)

designnotes.blog.gov.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 97 posts

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#61

Post by thescriptkiddie »

BFay wrote: post #46
silveira wrote: post #42

What really bothers me is that most of time when the date of birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than N years old? [Yes] or [No]". For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I have already…

I also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes it actually works!

I always go for January 1st, 1970. It is (nearly) always accepted on the form because it is a perfectly valid date to be born, but I like to imagine that some analyst is pulling their hair out thinking they have a null coalescing bug.

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#62

Post by Lex-2008 »

scoot wrote: post #36
pphysch wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better, just have the same value for each

Yup. 11/11 for me. Can't go to far wrong. Just wish I was born in 2011 (for reasons other than having the same number!) :)

oh wow, you don't even need to move your finger when entering digits - it's "one"s all along!

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#63

Post by rougka »

UK gov development is very impressive when I compare it to the government websites here which have a distinct 90’s scent. Both in open source projects and these design blogs. Seems like a highly professional software organization

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#64

Post by Tepix »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #61
BFay wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes it actually works!

I always go for January 1st, 1970. It is (nearly) always accepted on the form because it is a perfectly valid date to be born, but I like to imagine that some analyst is pulling their hair out thinking they have a null coalescing bug.

1970-01-01 is the way to go! The more, the merrier...

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#65

Post by Aachen »

joelanman wrote: post #52

author here, just to note our current design pattern for this is slightly updated: https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/date-input/

Very cool to see author responses on an article from 2013!

I was wondering why you chose to use the placeholder attribute to show labels rather than the (afaik recommended) usage of showing example values. The form shows example values, but outside the input fields. Did you test both ways and this turned out to be better after all, or this was just an implementation which worked fine in testing so it stuck?

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#66

Post by Daimanta »

Interestingly, some people have administrative birthdays were they are born on an uncertain day of the month which is registered as day 0. So, somebody could be born the 0th of june 1950.

If there is even less information available the same goes for the month of the year. I have seen passports where people are born on 0-0-1970

Must be a frustrating situation in many software systems.

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#67

Post by Tepix »

nishs wrote: post #27

I've seen some US government forms use [01] [Jan] [1970] where [01]: one- or two-digit day, typed manually [Jan]: three-letter month, picked from a dropdown [1970]: four-digit year, typed manually I think this is a good (the best?) presentation. By using a manual day entry instead of providing a dropdown, as the programmer you can avoid requiring client-side logic to restrict the number of days displayed in the dropd…

> I think this is a good (the best?) presentation.

I don't think so. It has problems with i18n. For example, the abbreviation for December is "Dic" in spanish and "Dez" in German, not "Dec" as in english.

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#68

Post by Tepix »

33degrees wrote: post #48
silveira wrote: post #42

What really bothers me is that most of time when the date of birth is asked it is done as a way to determine some age criteria. The same could be achieved simply asking "are you older than N years old? [Yes] or [No]". For example, I want to buy Quake on the Nintendo eShop. The website wants to know my age in order to show me a age restricted game. So it will always ask me the age same question even if I have already…

> Is this a by-product of some compliance or self-regulatory requirement like ESRB? Yes, Steam addressed this an announcement a few years ago: > Q: Why do you KEEP asking my damn age throughout the store? > A: We're with you on this. Unfortunately, many rating agencies have rules that stipulate that we cannot save your age for longer than a single browsing session. It's frustrating, but know we're filling out those a…

It's surprising that they are not even allowed to remember that you are older than, say, 21.

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#69

Post by Tepix »

makeitdouble wrote: post #24
hendry wrote: post #12

It's 2022 and input=date should be used instead for date pickers on the Web. https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system-backlog/issu...

The interface looks usually nice, but input=date is horrible to manipulate in many implementations. On iOS choosing year/month is the rolodex interface, as slow and clunky as usual, especially if you’re flipping it for 40~60 years. On android it moves month by month at most, so it’s even funnier to swipe for decades. I think the type=number alternative with validation + confirmation text with the month in letters is…

iOS has improved it's date picker which is precisely why you should use input=date in the first place. It may have accessibility (a11y) benefits, too.

Re: Asking for a date of birth (2013)

#70

Post by function_seven »

thescriptkiddie wrote: post #61
BFay wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also enter an absurdly old date, and usually I'll try setting an impossible day/month combo like February 31st... sometimes it actually works!

I always go for January 1st, 1970. It is (nearly) always accepted on the form because it is a perfectly valid date to be born, but I like to imagine that some analyst is pulling their hair out thinking they have a null coalescing bug.

My favorite irritating date is "1969-12-31" because now I know I have 2 problems: the coalescing bug and a timezone issue. :)
Post reply on HN