Change UI for "Date" Field Type - show separate year, month and day selection
In developing a membership registration form for our website, I am looking to include a "Date of Birth" field. However, the "Date" field type appears to only allow one method of entering a date. In our organization, there are many members who are older, and for whom the date entry requires navigation to their respective year of birth, which presents difficulty due to the method of data entry, and the propensity of our older members to be uncomfortable using computers.
(Admittedly, the calendar default of starting on today's date does lend itself to certain types of fields, like booking hotels or flights.)
It would be more intuitive and easier to use a method of entering data into the date field using three drop-down menus, like "Month", "Day", and "Year." I suppose I could do that myself by creating those 3 fields, but that opens up entry errors, like somebody entering "February 30" as a date, for example.
I recommend that the Wild Apricot team considers implementing an option such as the one I have suggested; it seems to be the more common method of entering dates into electronic forms, and would ease the burden on less-experienced users to navigate an unfamiliar date selection format.
I would love to hear what other users have experienced when utilizing the "Date" field in forms, if they have had difficulty, and what they have done to address user feedback in using it.
vickenak
shared this idea
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Chris Holmes
commented
We use this for entering birthdays as well and find the current date input method to be confusing. There are much better ways to input dates without requiring mouse clicks.
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WEBCSD
commented
We also created a Birth Date custom field and I felt the same way as above with the date selection method. It is not as intuitive as it could be, and we believe even younger users that are not 'problem solvers' may get confused.
