date format in forms?

[koray]

hi everyone,

in my form i have to take some date information in dd-mm-yy format.
but i don't want user to use tabs while typing. for example s/he
should simply type 280104 but 28/01/04 must appear.

what can i do for that?
should i use three input tags? but then, how can i make the cursor
jump to the next field when typing in current field is done?
or if i use one input tag, how can i keep '/' signs in the field fixed
when user types the date?

[Claire Tucker]

On Thu, 15 Jul 2004 16:16:02 +0000 (UTC), "Jukka K. Korpela"
<jk******@cs.tu t.fi> wrote:

Yes, and most use of dates requires a separation of year, month, day of
month. But how you achieve that is a different thing. Maybe I'm strange,
but I find it more comfortable to type 2004-07-15 or 2004 07 15 or
whatever needs to be typed than to type 2004 followed by 07 followed by
15 in three different fields, _even if_ there's "auto-tabbing" (i.e., the
cursor automatically moves to the second field after I have typed in four
digits into the first one) and even though I know well the idea behind
that. A date is a unit of information to me. So is my name, but I find it
much more natural to use different fields for the different components of
the name.

Your post inspired me to try the use of CSS to present three form
fields as one. The following fragments give the gist:

..dateinput {
border: 2px inset #eeeeee;
background: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
}

..dateinput input {
border: 0;
text-align: center;
}

.....

<span class="dateinpu t">
<input type="text" size="4" maxlength="4"> -
<input type="text" size="2" maxlength="2"> -
<input type="text" size="2" maxlength="2">
</span>

This appears, in IE and Firefox on Windows, like a single text field
with three input parts separated by hyphens. It's a bit like the
fields Windows uses for entry of numeric IP addresses in Control
Panel. Some scripting would be necessary to implement the
"auto-tabbing" behavior.

Of course, there's no way in CSS to say "make this look like a text
field", so the specification of the dateinput class is specific to my
configuration in Windows, but I wonder if you would find this entry
more natural since it looks like one field.

(I don't necessarily recommend the above approach. It's just an
experiment.)

-Claire

[Leif K-Brooks]

Claire Tucker wrote:

Your post inspired me to try the use of CSS to present three form
fields as one. The following fragments give the gist:
<snip>

Doesn't look right in Firefox 0.9 on Fedora Core 2:
http://ecritters.biz/inputfieldthing.png

[Claire Tucker]

On Sun, 18 Jul 2004 18:59:29 -0400, Leif K-Brooks
<eu*****@ecritt ers.biz> wrote:

Claire Tucker wrote:

Your post inspired me to try the use of CSS to present three form
fields as one. The following fragments give the gist:
<snip>

Doesn't look right in Firefox 0.9 on Fedora Core 2:
http://ecritters.biz/inputfieldthing.png

Well, as I noted there is really no way to make it look "right" if
that means to look like a normal INPUT field would look, since CSS
doesn't allow rules to borrow style properties from other selectors.

I expected it to do odd things in some cases, since the properties I
chose to set were very limited. In order to safely re-style INPUT
fields (which is, of course, a bad idea in most cases) it's best to
override a whole tonne of different properties to ensure that no
browser has an odd rules in its user-agent stylesheet which give
unexpected results.

With that said, Firefox's rendering is quite odd. I wonder what CSS
properties made it draw the input field background over the border of
the parent...

Best regards,
-Claire

[Leif K-Brooks]

Claire Tucker wrote:

With that said, Firefox's rendering is quite odd. I wonder what CSS
properties made it draw the input field background over the border of
the parent...

Without doing any testing, my guess is that the input box has a height
greater than 1em, so its background covers the span's border.

[Pierre Goiffon]

"Brian" <us*****@juliet remblay.com.inv alid> a écrit dans le message de
news:10******** *****@corp.supe rnews.com

In france a Zip code could also be shared by several towns, so the
same number and street name for a given zip code could possibly
belong to one town or another.
I was about to argue with you when I remembered where you're from.
;-)

:)
I answered beacause I practice mutch this subject in my last job - I worked
4 years for www.Webcity.fr, a cultural news website for citizens, the place
where you can find what to do tonight in your town, all the concerts for the
months to come and mutch more (to summarize it's a cultural agenda and an
adressbook). So as the site at this time covered more than 80 towns in
France, the question of zip codes was pretty important in our database.
AIUI, each town or city gets a 2 digit code -- the first two
digits of the postal code -- and uses the last 3 digits for internal
use (e.g., divide by arrondisement). But I suppose the rural regions
are different, and share a 2 digit code among several towns?

Not exactly. France has a long history, and a long tradition of
administrations , so it's a bit complicated. First, there are two main
nomenclatures used in France : postal zip codes (PTT) and INSEE ones. For
adress, that's of course the first to consider.

Now, France is divided in /régions/, and then in /départements/ (not sure of
the translations sorry, and I'm afraid it is one of these "faux ami" words :
exactly the same orthography but not the same meaning at all).

So, the regions are identified by their names, and departements have an
associated unique number. For exemple I'm now writing to you from St Martin
d'Hères in the /département/ "Isère" (38), /région/ "Rhônes Alpes". The zip
code is 38400, and the first two numbers are as you can see the number of
the /département/. A few month ago I was living in the same /région/ but
another departement, "Ain" and the postal zip code begins with 01, the "Ain"
number. You can see also this /département/ number at the end of all french
car number plates (exemple 4821 WX 38).

For metropolitan France (the DOM/TOM -Guyane, St Pierre et Miquelon, ...-
have a different structure of postal zip codes I think) the 3 last numbers
are to identified the place where you leave in that /département/. Whitch is
not the /commune/ (town) neither a /groupement de communes/ (towns union),
neither a /canton/ (group of towns defined for elections). I don't know at
all the origin of this division, why some towns have the same postal zip
code... Well, must be some french postal employees that decide this a long
time ago. As for other public services, postal services are a state monopoly
in France and we're really used to these kind of situations :)

[Pierre Goiffon]

"Claire Tucker" <fa**@invalid.i nvalid> a écrit dans le message de
news:hj******** *************** *********@4ax.c om

Your post inspired me to try the use of CSS to present three form
fields as one. The following fragments give the gist:

.dateinput {
border: 2px inset #eeeeee;
background: #ffffff;
color: #000000;
}

.dateinput input {
border: 0;
text-align: center;
}

....

<span class="dateinpu t">
<input type="text" size="4" maxlength="4"> -
<input type="text" size="2" maxlength="2"> -
<input type="text" size="2" maxlength="2">
</span>

For non CSS browser you should at least add signifiant labels for each input
tag. You could hide them if CSS is enabled via a display:none for exemple