

CalendarPicker: a new concept for date selection. - robicch
http://roberto.open-lab.com/2010/04/06/ultra-light-jquery-calendar/

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jister
>> the next/prev buttons are no fashionable: now you can hide them!

So how will the user know that they must use the mouse wheel to navigate
pre/next year or months? For me, it's not good usability-wise.

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goodness
Also, I use a laptop with no scroll wheel. There are ways to do scrolling,
like clicking both buttons, but it doesn't seem to send all the scroll wheel
events. So I can't even find a way to get that version of the calendar to
work.

An alternative to both might be to use a linear fisheye. It would just need a
selection for 31 days at the bottom, 12 months in the middle, and a few years
at the top. The thing that you would probably need to change for the fisheye
is not scrolling between months from the day row or years from the months row.
In some ways, this is a bit more intuitive anyway.

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IgorPartola
Pair that with the jQuery timepickr: <http://haineault.com/media/jquery/ui-
timepickr/page/>

It's not bad with the year and the month view. I would have the year slide
left and right, not just switch because that makes it look like nothing
happened at first.

The actual date picker is a bit awkward since it's not a traditional calendar.
It's a lot easier to figure out whether the 7th of the month is a Tuesday or a
Wednesday by seeing which column it's in rather than what is written
underneath it. That way you would have a much cleaner view as well.

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robicch
This was my initial inspirator: read the history [http://roberto.open-
lab.com/2010/03/23/so-hard-to-have-a-dat...](http://roberto.open-
lab.com/2010/03/23/so-hard-to-have-a-date/)

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webwright
Interesting experiment, but not a win.

For a new UI to be a success, it needs to be faster for the user to USE or
faster for the user to LEARN. The former is more important for tools with
repeat users (like a mail app), the latter is more important for sites with
transitory users. You could argue that it could perform okay on the former
point IF you ignore the meaningful population of people who use trackpads or
mobile devices... But how can you possible argue that ignoring that population
is a good idea?

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JeffJenkins
I like the idea of letting you jump through multiple months at once, but I
think it should show all of the days in the month. If you aren't looking for
something in the span initially shown, you're probably looking for something
just beyond that. If you start changing the month around it could be anywhere
that you want and extra clicks are added to find the right day to select.

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robicch
Interesting point of view. I'll try to see how it react. Thanks

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est
Who else think the wheel direction is inverted?

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robicch
:-) LOL..... I made a poll before doing it....

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nollidge
How did you do the poll, though? Were they supposed to pick between two live
demos, or did you just ask "should scrolling up increase or decrease the
value"? In left-to-right languages, I would think most people's intuition is
to scroll down to move right and scroll up to move left (with a unidirectional
scroll wheel, anyway).

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tvon
On a related note, drop-down date selection has always driven me nuts. Isn't
it easier to type "1977" than to find it in a drop-down? Isn't it easier to
type "1 <tab> 17 <tab> 1977" than to select each in a drop-down?

Drives me nuts, mostly when clients request the drop-down over the text
field...

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Qz
For things like video or website age gates then text entry can be annoying for
us heretics who prefer using the mouse to navigate computers rather than
keyboard. Any time I have to type something in instead of being able to select
with a mouse is a fairly annoying occurrence.

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tvon
Good point, it makes sense for age verification or any situation where you
wouldn't otherwise be using the keyboard.

Though what would really be ideal is a text input with a drop-down... might be
a good addition to jQuery UI (or similar).

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jsonscripter
It needs some easing and transitions to let the user know what's happening.

Maemo has a similar date picker, by the way. It's vertically, and the
scrolling is more intuitive partially due to this fact.

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mavroprovato
It's nice, but it really needs keyboard navigation...

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Adamsammy
I want it!

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danfitch
It is really missing Monday - Friday. Otherwise I like the idea.

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davidedicillo
it looks nice, but i don't think it's a good example of UX

