![\"The](\"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-content\/uploads\/2006\/08\/calendar.jpg\")
In my work creating a fault logging system for a client wanting to improve their support services, I found the need to present editable date and time fields in an HTML form. Clearly free-text for this function is messy and horrible, so I wanted a pop-up DHTML date\/time picker (aka calendar) to do the job for me. The support guy would just click on a little calendar icon next to the input field, then choose a date from a pretty popup.<\/p>\n
I'd found a fairly cheap and nasty one which did the job. Although I don't like to name and shame, I will say that I was using a script called "My Date Time Picker" which had been written late in 2003 and which I'd gotten off HotScripts.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n It worked. It produced horrible HTML and didn't use CSS at all, but it worked. I got half-way through attempting to modify its behaviour slightly to follow the principle of least astonishment<\/a> by being a little more intuitive, when I realised that it was a nightmare and wondered just what the hell I was doing.<\/p>\n So I uncharacteristically left the script alone and went on a second surf around the web to find an alternative script to save me all the work, vaguely aware that I'd not searched for long the first time.<\/p>\n And what should I find but the answer to any desires any man or woman could ever have had for a DHTML date\/time picker?<\/p>\n Enter dynarch<\/strong><\/p>\n I'd actually run across dynarch's The<\/em> DHTML \/ Javascript Calendar<\/a> before, but seem to recall finding that it was a commercial product. That's probably because the owner signed an agreement to allow Zapatec to offer their own commercial version<\/a>.<\/p>\n I've yet to determine the improvement shown by the pay-for version, as the open-source script is certainly a work of art. dynarch's script even 'interfaces' to a point with PHP, as it comes with a PHP wrapper which makes calling the date\/time picker an absolute breeze.<\/p>\n Right through to the choice of skins (I'm using 'Aqua') the entire thing leaves the web developer end-user with barely any work to do whatsoever. So I'm happy.<\/p>\n Except that I'm starting to inevitably feel a little sorry for the script I dumped. :\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What should I find but the answer to any desires any man or woman could ever have had for a DHTML date\/time picker?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[9,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kera.name\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}