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Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

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41–50 of 146 posts

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#41
post #38

A few years ago I wrote a mobile app for use by patients of local doctors' surgeries. This meant a higher-than-average proportion of older, less tech-savvy users. There was a flood of complaints about the OS-native date pickers, along the lines of: "There's no way to set the year! To get to my birth year, I had to tap the previous-month arrow 720 times!" (It seems people actually did this.) This is what happens in th…

It’s not just old people that suffer. I’m slightly ashamed to admit I started the 100-tap process when I first used that input before realising it was dumb and googling what to do. They really are bad.

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#42
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Montreal public transit times used to be on some kind of like, 28-hour clock. Bus times after midnight would be labelled 27:30 or something. Suuuper confusing. It sounds so bizarre in fact, that I'm doubting my memory a bit, but I'm certain it was like that (say around 2006 or so).

I've seen this in Japan as well. A store that's open from, let's say, 8am to 1am will actually advertise itself as being open from 8am to 25pm. I guess the perception is that it's confusing to have a range where the smaller number comes before the bigger number.

Maybe at that point they should say "Closed 1am to 8am" instead.

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#43
post #31

After dealing with datepickers for (checks notes) two decades, my best advice is to use the damn input type text with a placeholder showing a format, then saving it as a string in whatever that ISO that makes sense is called. Everything else is asking for endless trouble and pain with browsers, a11y, locales and what not. Also, may the God allmerciful save you from the cancer that custom components are, let whoever i…

That’s probably fine for dates that people have memorized, like their birthday. But it’s certainly not great for something like flight search, where I might know I want to leave in early April on a Friday or Saturday. For that I really need to see a calendar not only to input a date, but to visualize the possible dates for my trip.

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#45

They are wrong. Most OS native date pickers are very bad from a usability perspective. A javascript date picker fixes these issues, and allows more functions. And why are they arguing against their own product? Even making up bogus claims that using js date pickers would be illegal in Europe?

You know what's bad? A bespoke date picker that behaves differently from how the date picker works on the rest of the apps on the device.

Usability doesn't matter when there's an established behavior. Users get used to how it works, and then differences cause stumbling blocks.

Use the native date pickers.

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#46
post #31

After dealing with datepickers for (checks notes) two decades, my best advice is to use the damn input type text with a placeholder showing a format, then saving it as a string in whatever that ISO that makes sense is called. Everything else is asking for endless trouble and pain with browsers, a11y, locales and what not. Also, may the God allmerciful save you from the cancer that custom components are, let whoever i…

That’s probably fine for dates that people have memorized, like their birthday. But it’s certainly not great for something like flight search, where I might know I want to leave in early April on a Friday or Saturday. For that I really need to see a calendar not only to input a date, but to visualize the possible dates for my trip.

Input type date shows a calendar: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#47
post #38

A few years ago I wrote a mobile app for use by patients of local doctors' surgeries. This meant a higher-than-average proportion of older, less tech-savvy users. There was a flood of complaints about the OS-native date pickers, along the lines of: "There's no way to set the year! To get to my birth year, I had to tap the previous-month arrow 720 times!" (It seems people actually did this.) This is what happens in th…

Why were you using a calendar picker for a date of birth?

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#48
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is more common for them to write 8:00 to 25:00 - omitting AM and PM.

AM and PM is used in a few languages (mostly English) but many don't have it in their vocabulary at all, which probably includes Japanese.

In the case of Japanese, there is 午前・午後 for 12-hour time. e.g. 午後9時に着く (arrive at 9 P.M.). If it's obvious from context, then only the hour is said. e.g. in「明日3時にね」, the flow of the conversation disambiguates the hour (it's also unlikely the speaker means 3 A.M.)

There are also other ways to convey 12-hour time. e.g. 朝6時に起きる (wake up at 6 A.M. / wake up at 6 in the morning).

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#49
post #47
post #38

A few years ago I wrote a mobile app for use by patients of local doctors' surgeries. This meant a higher-than-average proportion of older, less tech-savvy users. There was a flood of complaints about the OS-native date pickers, along the lines of: "There's no way to set the year! To get to my birth year, I had to tap the previous-month arrow 720 times!" (It seems people actually did this.) This is what happens in th…

Why were you using a calendar picker for a date of birth?

Could you explain what you mean? We're talking about the OS-native datepicker, which pops up when a user clicks on an HTML .

Re: Pikaday: A friendly guide to front-end date pickers

#50
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably fine for dates that people have memorized, like their birthday. But it’s certainly not great for something like flight search, where I might know I want to leave in early April on a Friday or Saturday. For that I really need to see a calendar not only to input a date, but to visualize the possible dates for my trip.

Input type date shows a calendar: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...

Yes, but that is not what was recommended here above

"my best advice is to use the damn input type text"

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