Been travelling, so this is my first chance to chip in on this thread. The essential point is: you're asking users to enter their date of birth.
This is an answer that you can expect most users to have in 'muscle memory' in their fingertips, at a similar level to typing their street address. And it's also an answer that many users will have stored in a form-filler utility such as Google toolbar autofill. Therefore: let them type it in. Don't require drop downs or calendars or any other type of fancy widget. There is a minor issue, which is the problem of date order for internationalisation. If you can work out the accurate date from the text typed in, you don't have a problem (any day 13 and above is unambiguous). Otherwise you're going to have to provide a hint about the order that you want, and perhaps try to guess as well based on other clues such as address. The preference for typing in a date without fancy widgets or dropdowns doesn't necessarily apply to other dates. For example, type-in PLUS calendar is a good pattern for many dates such as booking flights. Users are often thinking something like: "Fly out on 15th, return the following Friday" - a recipe much easier to deal with on a calendar, but you need the type-in option as well for flexibility and accessibility. Best Caroline Jarrett Out now: "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability" http://www.amazon.co.uk/Forms-that-Work-Interactive-Technologies/ dp/1558607102 http://www.amazon.com/Forms-that-Work-Interactive-Technologies/dp/product-de scription/1558607102 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
