

Ask HN: what do you think is the best UI for setting up recurrence? - mmelin

Recurring tasks, reminders, emails or deliveries. Anything where you have something that should re-occur on some schedule.<p>What is the best UI that you've seen for configuring this?<p>- Free form text field, i.e. typing "every 24 hours"<p>- Classic form, dropdowns and radio buttons (examples would be appreciated)<p>- Crontab...<p>- Something else entirely
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jaymon
A lot of what is "best" has to do with how specific you want to be. Appending
"every" to a date is great if you want something to occur every N. But what if
you want it to occur every other N? Or the first N of every M? There's a
reason why things like Crontab or iCalendar's RRULE are so specific and
verbose.

In order to decide what is "best" I would first decide how specific I needed
to be and then start to narrow my input options based on my defined need.

~~~
mmelin
I agree. The iCalendar specification allows for some crazy complexity, but I'm
not sure I've seen a UI that allows you to use every feature possible with the
spec.

I'd think you could do a "discoverable" UI, where the default case is is
relatively simple but you can expand recurrence options when needed.

If anyone has an example of this being implemented I would appreciate a
pointer.

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mmelin
Examples of the classic form:

[http://www.taskcoach.org/screenshots/0.71.2-Windows_XP-
Task_...](http://www.taskcoach.org/screenshots/0.71.2-Windows_XP-
Task_editor_with_recurring_task.png)

[http://crowdfavorite.com/images/screenshots/tasks/2.7/recur_...](http://crowdfavorite.com/images/screenshots/tasks/2.7/recur_600.gif)

