Well done Maxime Haineault. Maxime has just released a new JQuery plug-in that I think will become the accepted way of entering dates into form fields.
It’s fast, easy to use and intuitive (localisation aside). Combined that with Maxime’s excellent design skills and it’s something attractive as well that I think you’ll start to see being used very widely on sites very soon.
It’s called the jquery.timepickr and you can check out the examples and code over at his site. http://haineault.com/media/examples/jquery-utils/demo/ui-timepickr.html [UPDATE: 11 Nov 08] It now has its on project page at http://haineault.com/media/jquery/ui-timepickr/page/
But before you dash over there, bear in mind that this is a very early release of code and or those of you watching in Black and White or Internet Explorer as it’s better known, don’t bother yet. This is experimental code and it’ll a) look bad and b) probably hang your browser.
But if you’re using Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera etc then you should see it just as intended.
I’ve included a screenshot below of the activated time picker in action.
Time Picker activated showing housr, minutes and am or pm choices
What’s nice about the time picker is that you just click once to activate it and then run your mouse to the time you require and the content of the input field continually changes showing you exactly what you’ve selected. Two clicks and you’re done.
There’s still work to be done on browser compatibility and better localisation to use the 24 hour clock etc. but this is an excellent start and I’m sure it’ll make its way into JQuery UI.
Filed under: Free Software , jquery, jquery UI, plug-ins, time picker
