UX trip: Calendar for birthday

I encountered this annoyance registering my child for a class. First, the form asked for birthday and age, and both were required fields. I was tempted to be inconsistent.




The real annoyance was the birthday field. It used a pop-up calendar widget, and did not allow me to type in the field. It started with today's date. To select my child's birthday, I had to navigate back through multiple years of months using arrows, which didn't stay in the same place on the screen because different months have different numbers of weeks (rows), so the widget got taller and shorter. If I missed a button, the widget would go away without changing the date.

It would be so much easier to just type the date. Even with a required MM/DD/YYYY format, I'd still be happier.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inno Setup custom data directory location

In my last post , I forgot to point you to Inno Setup ; go get the Inno Setup QuickStart Pack to get going. I showed how to copy a directory full of data, like tutorials or sample data, that might change depending on the customer. That means the files are not known when the installer is compiled. Here's what it looked like: Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: C:\MyCompany\data;    Flags: external recursesubdirs skipifsourcedoesntexist onlyifdoesntexist uninsneveruninstall;    Permissions: users-modify This time, I 'm going to show how to let the user choose where this directory is located, and whether to install the contents of the directory at all. First, let's show an obvious choice: Source: {src}\data\*; DestDir: {userdocs} \MyCompany\data; Flags: [as above.... ] That new constant will put the data in a subdirectory of My Documents, for the user that installs the program. This might be fine for you, if each user of your program is going to install it themselves
Read more

OpenEmbedded Angstrom for Advantech PCM-9375

I'm attempting to install a modern embedded linux OS on a 3.5" single-board computer (SBC), made by Advantech, the PCM-9375. It uses an AMD Geode processor, and has lots of connectors, but the main one we need is the PC/104 connector, because we have a PC/104 board for a laser rangefinder we use. After some investigation, I found that Cliff Blake at BEC systems has successfully used OpenEmbedded and the Anstrom distribution on this SBC. I'm going to attempt the same thing myself, then go beg for help. :) First, I upgraded my box to Ubuntu Hardy Heron, 8.04 Next, follow the Anstrom build page : Get bitbake and OpenEmbedded I look at the GettingStarted wiki page , and it points to OE and your Distro , which says make sure Dash is not /bin/sh. It was on my system, so I did: " sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash " and select No when it asks you to install dash as /bin/sh. as instructed. Next install a bunch of stuff. I checked these off in System .. Administration .. Synaptic
Read more

Inno Setup MSVC vcredist without bothering your users

If your C++ program is compiled with MS Visual Studio 2005 Express, and you link with the DLL versions of the C run-time libraries, you probably already know that you have to run vcredist_x86.exe to install those dependencies on a new computer before your program will run. Here's how to do that in an Inno Setup script. First, download vcredist_x86.exe from MSDN, Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) Notice that's for SP1, the instructions are different for non-SP1, and for the vcredist_x86.exe that comes with Visual Studio Standard or Professional. See the credit link below. Include this in your script: [Files] Source: {src}\bin\vcredist_x86.exe; DestDir: {app}\bin\; [Run] Filename: {app}\bin\vcredist_x86.exe; Parameters: "/q:a /c:""VCREDI~3.EXE /q:a /c:""""msiexec /i vcredist.msi /qn"""" """; WorkingDir: {app}\bin; StatusMsg: Installing CRT... Alternative for x64 ( I hav
Read more