Timeline for Most User-Friendly Form Fields for Entering Date/Time?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
10 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 1, 2014 at 3:34 | comment | added | Andrew | @Simon Oh! You are right. I meant to say chronologically. However, my advice to order vertically, not horizontally, still applies. | |
| Mar 31, 2014 at 23:48 | comment | added | Simon | @Andrew the example you supplied from usit.com is not dealing with dates. Sorting familiar jan,feb,march etc. alphabetically would be incredibly confusing. Context is everything in UX, what works for some 'mega-menus' doesn't necessarily work for others. | |
| Feb 6, 2014 at 20:35 | comment | added | Toni Leigh | I'd like to see an eyetracking study on this form, I would hypothesise it is more difficult to comprehend than a dropdown ! | |
| Feb 22, 2012 at 15:55 | comment | added | Kit Grose | Worth adding this article by Jakob Nielsen explicitly addressing users being asked to enter their DOB with drop-down fields (as he says, you can type your date of birth much faster than you can select it in a drop-down). | |
| Sep 16, 2011 at 23:40 | comment | added | Todd Sieling | Nice example indeed! And another vote for pull-downs for birth year being the worst. If only so many people weren't born in 1900 ;) | |
| Aug 3, 2011 at 21:12 | comment | added | sova | This is a sweet example and I think most programmers/developers have a tendency to overlook a big deal in UI design: you are not the only one using your product. If you can make basic data entry beautiful and easy who cares if typing it would save you half a second? Users only enter their birthday once, not ten times. I do agree that typing might be faster in some situations, but that's completely besides the point of UX | |
| Jul 13, 2011 at 15:36 | comment | added | Andrew | Nice example. Too bad the months are sorted wrong! It is more comfortable for these to be sorted alphabetically in vertical columns, instead of horizontal rows: useit.com/alertbox/mega-menus-wrong.html | |
| Dec 24, 2010 at 3:45 | comment | added | Lèse majesté |
It's probably quicker to type the numeric month than using a visual calendar. But the calendar is nice for selecting a string of dates, and it also prevents users from selecting a date that doesn't exist, e.g. Feb 29 on non-leap-years or April 31st. It's also useful if the day of week is an important factor for the selection. Of course, you could just calculate the day of week for the user after they type in a date and also warn them if the date doesn't exist.
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| Nov 23, 2010 at 15:31 | comment | added | stevenvh |
I bet I can type 07 ten times faster than you click the July field.
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| Sep 14, 2010 at 19:58 | history | answered | annemarie lock | CC BY-SA 2.5 |