Usability of DateTimeEditBox w/ Constraints - Editors for WPF Forum

Posted 16 years ago by Mike Strobel - Software Engineer, CDC Software

I encountered a usability issue in the "DateTimeEditBox Constraints" QuickStart. To reproduce, check the box to "Restrict to business hours (8am - 5pm)". The initial time is now "8:00:00 AM". If you start to edit the time and type "4:", with the intention of typing in a complete value of "4:00:00 PM", the hour field gets reset back to "8" because the AM/PM part is initially set to "AM", and "4:00:00 AM" is outside the allowed value range. The user must first move to the AM/PM part and change it to PM before entering "4" as the hour. In my opinion, this is a usability problem. Perhaps the time should only be validated once the editor loses focus or the last part is changed?

Comments (1)

Posted 16 years ago by Actipro Software Support - Cleveland, OH, USA

Yeah, you're right this is confusing :-)

Basically, the "restriction" is applied by the sample, which handles the ValueChanging event. Currently, when you type "4:" then ValueChanging is fired and the sample coerces to the range of 8am-5pm.

What we can do is coerce the value better. So if you type "4:", then we can assume you meant 4pm (because 4am is not valid). But things like "7:" would still coerce as they do now, because neither 7am or 7pm are valid.

Actipro Software Support

The latest build of this product (v24.1.3) was released 27 days ago, which was after the last post in this thread.

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