Friday, May 5, 2017

website design - Most User-Friendly Form Fields for Entering Date/Time?


What are the different ways to have fields in an application for date, time, or both? What are the pros and cons for each?


The most common seem to be a combination of 2–3 drop-downs, or some form calendar widget. Are there other options available? Which one is the most user-friendly?



Answer




I do believe a regular textbox with an indication of the expected format is often enough. Like Kevin mentioned, if you use a date picker you should absolutely provide a method for direct entry. Many people prefer to simply type the date.


But this is what I do on Techinsurance.com...


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Of course I have client and server side validation in place as well. The only other feature I added is that if they enter 12121999 or 12-12-1999 then the text is automatically formatted with slashes when you lose focus to the textbox. I adopted this technique in June and it has worked quite well for us so far.


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