Re: checking user input of MM-DD-YYYY

On Jan 15, 2008 2:24 PM, Andrew Ballard <aballard@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 15, 2008 2:05 PM, Brady Mitchell <mydarb@gmail.com> wrote: > > > I'm having users enter dates in MM-DD-YYYY format. is there a way > > > to check if what they have entered is invalid (like if they enter > > > 1-15-2008 instead of 01-15-2008) ? > > > > Why not use something like > > http://www.dynarch.com/projects/calendar/ > > to make it easier for the users? Along with being easier, the widget > > will format the input however you like. You can even have it displayed > > to the user in one format and post it to your form in another format. > > > > Of course there should also be an alternative method for those with > > JS turned off, but my experience with users entering dates by hand has > > been way too painful not to use a JS calendar widget. > > > > Just my two cents, > > > > Brady > > As a programmer, I tend to agree. However, I've worked with enough > people who felt that the time required to move your hand from the > keyboard to a mouse, click on what you want, and move back to the > keyboard to continue entering data on the form took too long to be > productive. This can be especially true for calendar widgets when you > have to change years. (Try a calendar widget for birthdate field or > something where you may have to set the year back more than 20 -- > especially if the GUI designer only made buttons to scroll 1 > month/year at a time.) > > Thinking back, I worked at one place about 8 years ago that had a > regular Windows based GUI for the billing system. I was surprised to > walk into a training class and see the instructor teaching the new > hires how to enter information in the screens without using the mouse > at all. (She hid the mice so they didn't have a choice.) > > On one of the last projects I worked on, we made all of our date > fields with the popup calendars and made several of the text fields > readonly (because we wanted users to use the calendars so we could > reduce entry errors). After a while, we had so many requests to make > the fields editable again that we did just that. allowing free-form entry and the widget is nice, especially if proper validation is in place no matter what. i have the dynarch widget on the current app im building and it took 3 clicks to get my birthday. one to open the widget one to select the month one to select the day i dont think thats too bad (but i did know about the month ddl you can get by holding the mouse down over a portion of the widget). going back 20 years is only 3 clicks away as well. -nathan