4 ms·

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

33 points by robicch 17y ago

rbicchierai 17y ago
13 jquery calendars reviewed +1 new cool component
- romland 17y ago
  Why, if I may ask, would you have one account to submit the story with and then another to reply to the story with? :) I'm curious!
btilly 17y ago
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/ http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(
- qeorge 17y ago
  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.
  - izak30 17y ago
    Either that, or one that opens the datepicker, but remains focused on the input, and hides the datepicker on blur.
- cschneid 17y ago
  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).
  - btilly 17y ago
    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.
- alake 17y ago
  jQuery.ui ones supports keyboard!
- ktsmith 17y ago
  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/raised in the US would write MM-DD-YYYY. When dealing with hiring issues getting those things wrong can lead to fines for the employer, incorrect eligibility for benefits for employees and other issues. What we ended up doing was having the date picker automatically show up and start moving to the date as it was typed in. If you entered 03-05-2010 and you meant May 5th 2010 you would see the calendar on March and then most users would switch to the date picker widget to correct the error. Localized date pickers such as datejs don't solve this particular problem because all that happens is the assumption about what format the date will be entered in changes. So an American in Germany might enter MM-DD-YYYY and the date picker will just assume that it's DD-MM-YYYY because that's the format specified in the de-DE.js file. I agree that flexible text entry fields are preferable, but I've seen several business cases for preventing the user from being able to enter the date any way they want due to the ambiguity in date formats.
  - mcav 17y ago
    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.
    - isleyaardvark 17y ago
      That would be 12 days per month, about a third of all dates would result in a blocking prompt. Eek.
  - jeduan 17y ago
    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.
- aquadoctorbob 17y ago
  Thanks for the link. That's useful.
amanfredi 17y ago
What's the difference between the yellow border and shaded highlighting?
- ktsmith 17y ago
  Selected date vs current date.
angumagu 17y ago
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.

33 points by robicch 17y ago

rbicchierai 17y ago

13 jquery calendars reviewed +1 new cool component

romland 17y ago
Why, if I may ask, would you have one account to submit the story with and then another to reply to the story with? :) I'm curious!

btilly 17y ago

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/ http://www.datejs.com/ and it worked great.) I type faster than I use the mouse. But everyone wants me to use a mouse. :-(

qeorge 17y ago
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.
- izak30 17y ago
  Either that, or one that opens the datepicker, but remains focused on the input, and hides the datepicker on blur.
cschneid 17y ago
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).
- btilly 17y ago
  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.
alake 17y ago
jQuery.ui ones supports keyboard!
ktsmith 17y ago
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/raised in the US would write MM-DD-YYYY. When dealing with hiring issues getting those things wrong can lead to fines for the employer, incorrect eligibility for benefits for employees and other issues. What we ended up doing was having the date picker automatically show up and start moving to the date as it was typed in. If you entered 03-05-2010 and you meant May 5th 2010 you would see the calendar on March and then most users would switch to the date picker widget to correct the error. Localized date pickers such as datejs don't solve this particular problem because all that happens is the assumption about what format the date will be entered in changes. So an American in Germany might enter MM-DD-YYYY and the date picker will just assume that it's DD-MM-YYYY because that's the format specified in the de-DE.js file. I agree that flexible text entry fields are preferable, but I've seen several business cases for preventing the user from being able to enter the date any way they want due to the ambiguity in date formats.
- mcav 17y ago
  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.
  - isleyaardvark 17y ago
    That would be 12 days per month, about a third of all dates would result in a blocking prompt. Eek.
- jeduan 17y ago
  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.
aquadoctorbob 17y ago
Thanks for the link. That's useful.

amanfredi 17y ago

What's the difference between the yellow border and shaded highlighting?

ktsmith 17y ago
Selected date vs current date.

angumagu 17y ago

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.