Question

I have an input asking the submitter how long an event took. Right now it’s a normal textbox that should error out if anything but an integer is submitted. I tell the submitter to input the length in whole minutes.

However, thinking in minutes isn’t the brains best ability… Neither is following instructions, so I often get “support-requests” that state that “my input of 1,5 hours didn’t work”.

Is there any good way of requesting the user to submit a length of time, and accepting other than minutes in return?

Answer 1

Why won’t you make your control a bit more intelligent and allow this to be entered: 1h, 40m, 1.5h, 1,5h, 2d5h, etc. Optionally, you can “AJAXly” parse this value on the server side and provide a side-by-side hint, which will state how exactly your program will interpret the value.

                -----------------
Enter Timespan: | 2d1.5h        |   (2 days and 1.5 hours, 25.5 hours total)
                -----------------

Additionally, you can use some reasonable defaults, like 1.5 (or 1,5) is most likely 1.5 hours, not 1.5 minutes, and should be interpreted as such. 0,5 is not 30 seconds as well, but rather 30 minutes, etc.