wish: mark "Today" for calendar widget

[Kinnin Vo-Shay]

Pretty simple idea, I hope!

Basically, sometimes I find that I need to change dates of transactions I've already entered, or am inheriting, and the date it has is several clicks away. Also, sometimes I'm just an idiot that clicks the wrong part of the calendar a couple times (like the year) without realizing and wants to "reset" it to today. So a little "Today" button on it to set the date to "Today" would be quite useful!

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

if you empty the date widget, it fills with today's date
maybe adding an empty icon (like a search box) would do the job ?

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

>if you empty the date widget, it fills with today's date

Hmm, didn't know about that empty date trick, good to know and I'll probably use that.

However, I don't think fulfills the usability quotient for every case. Consider the usability when someone wants a date near "Today", and already has the calendar pop-up widget open. At this point the user is solely focused on using the mouse to select a date. In order to use what the empty field functionality, they would need to:
0) Know about it.
1) Click outside the calendar widget OR move their hand to the Esc button and press that
2) Then select the date (another mouse click and drag)
3) Then move their hand from to the delete/backspace button (where it usually isn't) and then press that
4) then either (a) click to open the calendar again and use it, or (b) type in the date, which probably means moving the mouse hand to the keyboard

The amount of context switching is a little much.

And from experience interacting with many non/less technical users, they will want to predominantly use the mouse to select the date, rather than their keyboard and the invisible functionality of clearing the field. Even I fall into that mode at times, so to help with that I'm just suggesting a little button in the calendar widget pop-up that says "Today".

> maybe adding an empty icon (like a search box) would do the job ?

I'm not sure what you're envisioning here unfortunately, so I couldn't say yes or no. I've attached a paint mock up of what I have in my mind; hope that helps. (imagine it says "Today" instead of "togglebutton", and the button isn't as wide as that necessarily.)

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

Maxime - what's the open question that remains on this?

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

Hi Kinnin,

I will read your post later on, what I was suggesting is showed in the screeshot:
- mark the today day (depends on the theme) here new newadaita it is bold
- and the little icon on the right of the input like in searchbox

BTW: there is an icon to show user the current quite hidden tooltips with what to enter in there

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

Ah, thank you for the picture, I understand clearly what you mean now. So the added reset button clears the box, which would set the current day I guess? One really good thing about that is that it exposes the hidden feature of setting it to the current day. I like the light emphasis of the current day in the calendar!

The only question I have with the added button is what happens if the calendar pop-up is open? Would the button close it, or would it stay open for the user to be able to select a day near the current day?

[Maxime DOYEN (mdoyen)]

I've simply added the day mark if the date is today

and also printed to empty for today in the tooltip text which will be:
- type: d, d/m, m/d a complete date
- use arrow key + ctrl or shift
- empty for today

[Kinnin Vo-Shay (vo-shay)]

Hopefully the change is as mouse friendly as it looks to be for the keyboard.

By the way, I realized that I'd seen the "Today" button, as I initially proposed it, in Outlook. So the button is going to be very familiar to many users.
See here for a screenshot: https://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/03_selecting_a_date.png.pagespeed.ce.Zfugi11G-t.png