JFSIII.org

I just sent the following letter to an online todo list site (sounds like sha schmoo ist) after a very frustrating experience.

Read on:

Dear lord!

I'm the one who just accidentally sent that message with the same title as this one. (It merely read, "Oh, the irony!" - Ed.)

This is my third email attempt regarding this issue. The prior (truncated) message was to read:

>> Second email attempt

Oh, the irony!

This is actually my second email, but the first one closed when I accidentally clicked my cursor outside the Greybox (instead of the Firebug icon) and the window closed without sending my message.

The first email was on its way to saying:

>> First email attempt

My bubbling enthusiasm has just been popped by crushing disappointment.

I just created an account and then my first project, but when I attempted to add my first task I received a JavaScript alert stating the task could not be saved.

Using Firebug to look at the POST request:

	    date_string  20. Jul 611
	    due_date     611-7-20T21:26
            <snip>
	

it's obvious what happened (my crazy out of bounds data caused a 500 error) but I want to talk about how the error occurred.

I first entered 2007/06/11 as the due date and I received a small white-on-red "invalid date format" message next to the text input.

There are no clues, that I could find, to a "correct" date format. I then tried 2007-06-11, which was also an "incorrect date format".

I finally (I think) tried YYYYMMDD (20070611) which is what was accepted on the front end, but caused the 500 server error.

Besides the bug report you've gotten about data validation, I want to ask that you please find a way to better help users cope with "incorrect" values.

I'm of the belief that it's you that is incorrect, not the user. I too am a web developer, btw, so I include myself in that "you" :)

My point is that you could:

• accept those two formats I entered (YYYY/MM/DD and YYYY-MM-DD seem reasonable)
• give me a calendar to prevent me from making a "mistake" and entering "incorrect" data
• or, at least show me an example of a correct format. I say wipe out my value and replace it with something like "EX: correctly/formatted/date"

but, something, please.

Thank you,

John

As it turns out, there is a shorthand method for entering dates which, while certainly faster, is not what I expected or could even guess how to solve.

My follow up email:

I just emailed a long message regarding troubles with dates.

I now understand my format choices. I actually even clicked on the ? icon, but just quickly glanced and decided it was a general help page; not help on date formats.

While I now understand how much quicker "Mon @ 1500" is, "11. Jun 2007" (two valid "sha schmoo ist" formats - Ed.) is not how my American brain works.

Like I said earlier, support for more date formats or a calendar to control format can only be good things.

Thanks,

John

So, while I realize there was some attempt to notify me of the format, the page didn't do anything to help me fix the problem. Nothing to educate me.

Some thoughts on forms in general and this page in particular

• Accept as many reasonable values as possible. Especially for fields, like dates, where there is a variety of formats worldwide.
• Show the user what is correct. Print an example in the field, open the help window, anything.
• Better control the method of input.

A text field is truly asking the user to type in anything they want. If you want it in a certain format, then make it easier for me to do it right. A calendar popup would be an example in the issue I had.

I'm still using the site, by the way, and, absent this issue, very much like what I've found so far.