- From: Ian Hickson <ian@hixie.ch>
- Date: Tue, 8 Feb 2005 00:40:48 +0000 (UTC)
On Tue, 8 Feb 2005, Rimantas Liubertas wrote: > > To enter some date you must: Click on the year drop-down. Scroll to the > right item. Click on it (and be sure not to miss). Repeat for the month. > Repeat for the day. (Just FYI, you can actually use the keyboard as well: click the first control, then start typing, then press tab, type, tab, type. Most UAs jump to the right item in the drop down when you start typing in one.) > User obviously does know what date he want to enter, so why to be afraid > of text box? What IS confusing is to guess which is the Correct Format. > There is no de facto standard on this, so forcing some format on the > user will break the main usability principle: "don't make me think" (or > do not make me feel stupid). Hints like DD-MM-/YYYY (and especially > MM/DD/YY ones) are not of much help, because you still have to decipher > and parse them in your head (that is - think). Well, if text fields represent good UI for date inputs, then the current fallback for <input type="date"> seems fine. People were arguing that it wasn't good UI, and that therefore it wasn't fine. > > > Webmasters will want to move to a datepicker because it provides > > > better usability than the three <select> elements while offering > > > similar usability to a textbox. However, they won't want the > > > fallback to be a textbox because of the programming difficulties in > > > specific situations. > > > > Handling free-form input for dates isn't that hard if you are willing > > to reject anything that doesn't match a given format. You can even > > suggest one format and accept a number of other popular formats, > > assuming that you only accept unambiguous formats. > > To quote Donald Norman (http://www.jnd.org/GoodDesign.html): > --- > Hurrah for Microsoft! Too many companies force you to enter dates in > their preferred format (and often they only tell you after you do it > wrong. In Outlook calendar, you can type almost anything, and it is > interpreted properly. For example, "tomorrow," "day after tomorrow," > "next day," Wednesday," Wed." Oct. 24, 24 Oct, 14/10, 10/14, etc. > Kudos to Microsoft > --- Yeah, that's the best. It's also the hardest to implement! :-) But authors are certainly free to implement that, as are Web Browser implementors. > From the usability point of view my vote would be text box with > capabilities which Norman describes (so you can just type 'tonight') and > date-picker component beside.(like > http://www.dynarch.com/demos/jscalendar/). Yup, that's definitely an allowed way of implementing type="date". -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Monday, 7 February 2005 16:40:48 UTC