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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