Date entry on web form?

[Noozer]

Target browser is IE on an Intranet...

What is the best/simplest way to implement date input on a form?
- Separate text inputs for year, month, day? (Good change you'll get bad
data)
- Single text input for full date? (What format will user enter? Difficult
to parse)
- Select/Option for year, month, day? (Only valid entries happen, but it's
ugly - My current choice)
- Some kind of calendar picker control? (Would be my choice is there was
some standard way to do this)

Bascially, I'm building a Search form with a fair number of options for the
user to choose from. One is a date range and I'm having problems making is
simple to use.

Thx

 

[Hywel Jenkins]

Target browser is IE on an Intranet...

What is the best/simplest way to implement date input on a form?
- Separate text inputs for year, month, day? (Good change you'll get bad
data)
- Single text input for full date? (What format will user enter? Difficult
to parse)
- Select/Option for year, month, day? (Only valid entries happen, but it's
ugly - My current choice)
- Some kind of calendar picker control? (Would be my choice is there was
some standard way to do this)

Bascially, I'm building a Search form with a fair number of options for the
user to choose from. One is a date range and I'm having problems making is
simple to use.

IMO, a single text input for the full date, with a picture next to it
(dd.mm.yyyy, for example), and validation on the field.

There are calendar pickers out there, but I find it quicker to enter a
date than use them. How about both?

 

[Jukka K. Korpela]

Target browser is IE on an Intranet...

So you intend to rewrite the pages when some big boss realized that IE is
a security threat and commands everyone to use Firebird, for example?

It's generally a good idea to avoid assuming things you don't need to
assume. In HTML design, this means designing for any browser, unless you
are forced to do otherwise.

What is the best/simplest way to implement date input on a form?

A text input field, preceded by an explanation that describes the accepted
date format(s), and naturally server-side code to check for acceptability
and to convert to an internal standardized format.

- Separate text inputs for year, month, day? (Good change you'll get
bad data)

Too clumsy. Think about it: how do people write dates on paper?
This would be more complicated.
(Good chance you'll fail to realize that the server-side form handler needs
to be prepared to anything, anyway.)

- Single text input for full date?
Right.

(What format will user enter?

One that you tell him to use.

Difficult to parse)

Not really. And it's the author's job to handle such things. The user
comfort should be maximized, not the author's.

- Select/Option for year, month, day? (Only valid entries happen, but
it's
ugly - My current choice)

Even more clumsy. (Think about a user who needs to listen to the first 30
integers before he gets to the 31st, when that's the day we have. In
graphic browsers, the select menus are just clumsy. Ugly too, perhaps, but
who cares? This isn't really a beauty contest any more than paper forms
are.)

- Some kind of calendar picker control? (Would be my choice is there
was some standard way to do this)

In most cases, too clumsy with no tangible benefit.

 

[Toby Inkster]

Bascially, I'm building a Search form with a fair number of options for the
user to choose from. One is a date range and I'm having problems making is
simple to use.

I recently needed to include a date field in a form, and chose to go for a
free-form text field (plus an indication of the expected date format -
dd/mm/yyyy) plus a javascript (I know!) popup (I know!) calendar.

The server-side script then converts it to an internal yyyymmdd format
which it can use for its own devious purposes.

This seems to work well -- nobody has had problems entering the date.

I used (but heavily modified) this script:
http://javascript.internet.com/calendars/popup-date-picker.html