Picking Time

[Noah Botimer]

Eli,

I hadn't seen this picker before.  But I love it.  It seems to take  
some real estate, but so many others force scrolling in a tiny  
<select> to work around a mostly non-issue, what with pop-up  
behavior.  With some smart parsing to allow text entry, it could be a  
winner.

Thanks,
-Noah

On Nov 11, 2008, at 11:01 AM, Eli Cochran wrote:

> Interesting blog posting by John Resig this morning talking about a  
> time picker that I've mentioned before and also the delightful  
> jQuery Themeroller.
>
> - Eli
>
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
>> Date: November 11, 2008 2:07:52 AM PST
>> Subject: Picking Time
>> Source: John Resig
>> Author: John Resig
>>
>> It's not often that new user interface conventions are born - or  
>> popularized. Even less so within the realm of web development. I'd  
>> argue that Sparklines and Lightbox are two of the best examples of  
>> UI conventions that were popularized on the web.
>>
>> Recently Maxime Haineault announced a simple jQuery plugin for  
>> inputting a new time of day called jQuery.timepickr.js. Its  
>> principles are very similar to jQuery itself: Get users to input  
>> the time as simply as possible with as little input as possible.
>>
>> To achieve this he made a "two click" time picker. The first click  
>> is within the time field. This activates the display and allows  
>> the user to choose the time - all of which is done by moving the  
>> mouse over the times that you desire. The final click is anywhere  
>> - filling in the time that was chosen. It's hard to explain, you  
>> simply have to try it.
>>
>>
>> One thing that you'll notice using it is that it's fast. Very  
>> fast. I'd argue much faster than clicking into the input area,  
>> moving to the keyboard for entering the time, typing the time,  
>> then moving back to mouse.
>>
>> But not only is it faster, but it's also quite intuitive - which  
>> is rather rare for something that utilizes a completely new user  
>> interface convention.
>>
>> A nice extra point is that the input is completely styled using  
>> the jQuery UI style conventions - which means that you'll be able  
>> to customize it completely with the jQuery UI Themeroller.
>>
>>
>> I love the Themeroller and use it all the time to customize UI  
>> controls. It beats the pants off of any other UI customization  
>> tool that I've seen. Definitely give it a whirl. Consistently  
>> styling JavaScript user interface components can be incredibly  
>> annoying, but the Themeroller helps to make it sane - which is  
>> just perfect.
>>
>>
>> Read more…
>>
>
> . . . . . . . . . . .  .  .   .    .      .         .              .   
>                    .
>
> Eli Cochran
> user interaction developer
> ETS, UC Berkeley
>
>
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