Opinion - Entry of a DATE into any iPhone/iPad app

question…. which do you prefer, when entering a DATE into an iPhone/iPad app? To use the DatePicker Wheels? or have to type the date in manually? [I prefer to type]

I guess the same question applies to TIME, but I assume they’d be the same answer

the picker

Definitely the wheel. Especially considering that I’m never sure if 1/11 is the first of November or the eleventh of January. So why be ambiguous?

:crazy_face:!

:yum:

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LOL… cuz I’m American… so 1/11 is alway Jan 11th.

So far its split about 50/50 (people hear, and other family/friends)

And its a real pain to enter a birthday when you have to spin the wheel backwards 60 years … and then over-shoot…etc.

beside… you type JAN and its not ambigious : 01-Jan-2020 or Jan 01, 2020

Then make a custom wheel where you can spin the decades separately.

And “here” it is 100% for the wheel … and we know BEST :roll_eyes:

Thanks… but after some testing… It is SO much easier to enter dates via the keyboard, especially since the data entry paradigm isn’t constantly shifting from keyboard to wheels, back to keyboard… its just all keyboard

IMHO the picker (even though you already made up your mind). In my country the date format is dd/mm/yyyy and it’s a pain for the user having to change the last day of the month back to 30,29 or 28 when he/she enters a month with 30, 29 or 28 days after he has typed it once already.

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The picker. Definitely.

Thanks all… for what its worth… I’ve decided to remove all pickers from my app… .Date and otherwise. A number of my testers balked, until they actually tried it… and liked the non-picker method better… . Entering a Date within a few days of today the speed wasn’t much different… but entering a date years in the past was much slower with the picker…

Pickers with the inertia flick should be just as quick unless you’re entering dates in medieval times!

Perhaps Dave was testing it using his birthdate :stuck_out_tongue:

just kidding!!!

In a serious note. I implemented date pickers in the app I’m currently working on which is a rewrite of an app that was originally developed using Oracle Forms. The amount of incorrect dates that was entered into the db was huge. The date picker will help minimize that, or at least that is the plan.

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I saw PopupMenus used for dates in Web developments (in fact I saw a user setting a date in Firefox html page and that used three PopupMenus).

No special opinion about Popup/Pickers; it depends on dates (search a day in the current/next month for a meeting or entering a birth date are very different).

Picker wheel sir.

I’d also vote for the wheel, but if the fields are the chosen way, why not arranging the fields based on the user’s settings?

So you’d put the fields in the order of the user’s locale (and, optionally, adjust the separator). For dd/mm/yyyy, you’d have FieldDay then FieldMonth and FieldYear. Swap the fields so that anyone is comfortable with the view and its settings.

Thanks for all your input… but the Wheel lost, the app is complete and feedback has all been positive… thanks again