7 comments

  • Udy Regan, almost 4 years ago

    If you look at any of the major systems for storage solutions in Australia, I think you'll realize that there are very few "standards" across the board, only what works for each individual company. You're going to have to try really hard if you want everybody to conform to one particular way of doing things. And it'll be even more painful to port everybody over once you've decided too...

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  • Ege GörgülüEge Görgülü, over 7 years ago

    I like the reasoning and the video but do we really need a global solution? I'd love to see some data backing this up. Y/M/D format seems awkward to be honest.

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    • Rabid PuffinRabid Puffin, over 7 years ago

      A global solution becomes more important when you don't have information regarding where the user is from or what format they are expecting. Someone that doesn't have an account, and hasn't already set up their language and formatting preferences, needs to have a solution that is going to provide both them and you with the highest likelihood of success without errors—especially if the information they are providing has legal or safety ramifications. So, why not guess where they are and what they want, because we do have formatting data? This doesn't work if you're designing a solution for users behind certain corporate networks or VPN's. I worked with designing solutions for users that work out of Spain, their IP shows up as coming out of Germany, and their corporate mandated language and formatting is all US and English.

      Regarding YYYY-MM-DD, I'm most used to MDY having grown up in the US—but I'd be the first person to tell you it's a crazy format. YMD is the most logical way to break down a date due to the natural sorting and that it zeros in on the exact point, versus emanating from it. Honestly, try labeling files on your computer with the different formats and see the splendor that is YMD. Also, like I brought up in the video, it prevents a lot of assumptions by month and day-first writers—which is a real and rampant issue if you do have a global user base that are entering dates.

      I have a bunch of resources and data points that I discovered while researching the video. I'd be happy to share them with you if you're interested! Thanks for watching!

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      • Sanchit Gupta, over 7 years ago

        Would a better solution be switching date input based on the country user is visiting from. For example: for US Date field will show MM-DD-YYYY but for Australia Date field will show DD-MM-YYYY

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        • Rabid PuffinRabid Puffin, over 7 years ago

          That makes the assumption that you know where you user is located and what their personal preference is. US is MDY, Australia is DMY, Canada is…well, Canada officially observes all 3 variations. Which one do you use in that case? A global solution is designed to be the default with the highest likelihood of success. If you have information about your users' personal preferences, you could modify the interface for them. The trick is coming up with something that will work when you don't have the luxury of being able to ask them.

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          • Tait BrownTait Brown, over 7 years ago

            Also with people like myself moving from AdBlock to uBlock, a tonne of helper libraries are now blocked. All the geoip lookup services are blocked. I guess you can still query the user language (EN-AU) but for some strange reason a surprising amount of Australian visitors have their lang as EN-US.

            1 point
            • Rabid PuffinRabid Puffin, over 7 years ago

              You know what Tait, I'd completely forgotten about those reasons that the helpers could be blocked! I know I've run into it a ton before with corporate blocking, but the consumer adblocking (which I myself run by default), will quietly kill a lot of your best designed javascript intentions.

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