Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

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Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby brenthale » Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:32 am

Hi,

We recently switch the date calendar components in our product to Jide's DateComboBox component. We then go this comment on our forums:

"Expiration dates - I'm not sure what the reasoning was for getting rid of being
able to scroll by year when entering the expiration date at the end of
finishing a WO but that was a really handy function for products that expire
several years after production. I realize I can just type in the date but It
doesn't make sense to me why you would get rid of that function."

Now I realize that you can change the year by clicking on the year in the popup. But...it is not what users expect nor did this user figure it out (I will let them know). It took me a while to figure out that that is the way to change the year. I think I stumbled on it accidentally because the normal mnemonic/icon that most people expect is not there.

I would propose that Jide provide the ability (via an option) to show "<<" and ">>" buttons (to the left and right of the month inc/dec buttons) that many people are use to working with in a date selector. These types of buttons are seen all over the internet and more boldly show users how to change the year.

Thanks,
Brent
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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby JIDE Support » Tue Jun 30, 2009 11:35 am

Agreed. Will let you know when we have a release ready.

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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby JIDE Support » Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:15 am

We designed the date chooser panel following .NET date chooser design. To keep the design, the first step we would make in next release would be to auto show the year spinner while mouse roll over the "year" label. The difference with current release is that, the spinner will show up without requesting the customer to click the "year" label. Please see if this could satisfy your customer.

BeforeMouseOver.png
BeforeMouseOver.png (65.27 KiB) Viewed 21941 times


AutoShowSpinner.png
AutoShowSpinner.png (65.49 KiB) Viewed 21941 times


Thanks,
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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby brenthale » Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:36 am

That is only slightly better and doesn't go far enough in my opinion.

I don't know anything about the .NET controls/design. Neither did my customer. Personally, I can think of many reasons why it is not a very good design. The main reason is that a user can't tell how to change the year unless they get lucky and roll their mouse over the 'year' label. That, in my opinion makes it a very poor design. I also have issues with how small spinner buttons are. You have to have precision mouse movements to hit the right button on spinners. Especially ones that are limited in height to the height of a text label. That gives you what, 8 pixels at the most you have to hit.

The roll-over idea is only a slight improvement. If you are set on that design could the spinners show up when you roll your mouse over the entire header of the popup? Nah...probably won't work. You have the month clickable as well.

Sorry...not a fan of the .NET design but I can see how clean it makes it as well. I just want a little more control over how it interacts with the user.

Thanks,
Brent
brenthale
 
Posts: 13
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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby JIDE Support » Thu Jul 02, 2009 10:46 am

I should say both design has pros and cons. Using the buttons is easy to navigate to next year and previous year but using spinner is easier to type in the year and jump to any year. Imagining user needs to adjust the year to 100 years later. I guess to get the best of both worlds, we will add an option to show next year and previous year but still keep the year spinner when clicked. If the option flag is turned off, we will not show next/previous year but use mouse over to enable the spinner.

Thanks,
JIDE Software Technical Support Team
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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby JIDE Support » Mon Jul 20, 2009 10:24 pm

Just so you know, this is fixed in 2.7.0 which was just released.

Thanks,
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Re: Request for better year inc/dec in DateComboBox

Postby brenthale » Mon Aug 03, 2009 9:31 am

Awesome!!! Thanks for the quick turn-around on this. You guys are great.

Brent
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