Closed
Bug 71607
Opened 23 years ago
Closed 23 years ago
Displays time in several different formats at the same time
Categories
(Bugzilla :: Bugzilla-General, defect)
Bugzilla
Bugzilla-General
Tracking
()
RESOLVED
FIXED
Bugzilla 2.12
People
(Reporter: bratell, Assigned: tara)
Details
Attachments
(2 files)
622 bytes,
patch
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Details | Diff | Splinter Review | |
3.90 KB,
patch
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Details | Diff | Splinter Review |
When doing a search with a date column on I notice that the date formats are in (at least) three completely different formats. It's the normal (ISO) YYYY-MM-DD, but also a MM-DD or if it is DD-MM and one english textual date weekday HH:MM. It get's confusing to have them all mixed up and in the case of "03-02" I don't know it's 2 March or 3 February (or is it maybe the time slightly malformed, 03:02 today?). I would suggest to use the same format for all posts and if you really want to demonstrate cool technology making it a pref so that people can turn it on on will. For most uses, this will be a usability problem since you have to spend extra time parsing the date all the time because you don't know (your brain doesn't) how to read the date until you have read it, i.e. to use computer language you have to make two passes over it instead of one.
Reporter | ||
Comment 1•23 years ago
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Example: ID Changed 5335 2000-11-07 8709 01-18 28146 12-20 40898 Fri 14:53
Comment 2•23 years ago
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I had the same complaint at the time, but I checked it in anyway, because two other reputable bugzilla folks r='ed the patch. I think this deserves another look before 2.12 ships.
Target Milestone: --- → Bugzilla 2.12
Comment 3•23 years ago
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I was the one who made that change (bug 66058) and now I agree that this is confusing. Maybe we should just drop the MM-DD display and use YYYY-MM-DD there, too? This would be almost a one-line change.
Reporter | ||
Comment 4•23 years ago
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That would be an certain improvement. As for leaving the "Friday 12:23" type in, I'm a little uncertain. It might be good for certain times and I don't won't to dictate for others just because I like the date column to be easily parseble.
Comment 5•23 years ago
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Why not let the user decide on date format, perhaps giving options like "Date only", "Date and time", "Automatic"? (Where "Automatic" is the bug 66058 behaviour, but excluding the confusing mm-dd format). This would also allow users who wanted to see it to have access to the changed time of a bug older than a week. Bugzilla already lets users decide whether they want the summary truncated or not, so column options already have a precedent...
Comment 6•23 years ago
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That would definitely be a good thing (e.g. I'd like to be able to choose the timezone, too), but it would be much more work than this small change was. But that's a new bug (or better, feature request), so please file one if you like. Let's keep this bug on just one issue. The current display behaviour is: If changed within the last 18 hours: time only (12:24:34) If changed within the last 6 days: weekday and time (Fri 12:24) If changed within the last 100 days: month and day (01-19) If changed later: previous behaviour (2001-01-19) What's wrong with that, except that the third case (mm-dd) is a bit confusing? For dates within the last week, I find the weekday more useful than the month and day, that's why I chose it.
Reporter | ||
Comment 7•23 years ago
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I realized one more argument for avoiding mixing of "Thursday" and "2001-03-05" That way you have to remember which date which weekday was on (which is hard to do on the fly) since otherwise you can't relate between the different dates which you could otherwise: "Ah, that was two days before that other thing". I like what slee@uk.bnsmc.com suggested, but as a user pref. How hard is it to access user prefs in the code? If it is like: if user.PreferredDataFormat() == 1 then Print theDate.AsDay() else if user.PreferredDataFormat() == 2 then Print theDate.AsDayAndTime() else Print theData.Magic() I see no reason not to implement it (apart from having to do the UI in the prefs). Anyway, if you can disable MM-DD and leave this bug open for the rest, I think that might be enough for 2.12.
Comment 9•23 years ago
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The different time formats are quite nice when you have buglists sorted by one of the date/time fileds.... although it is more difficult to mentally parse otherwise. (I didn't realize how nice this change was until I clicked that header link).
Comment 10•23 years ago
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Comment 11•23 years ago
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Comment 12•23 years ago
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Attached the patch I suggested above (2001-03-12 09:49), although I personally prefer the way it currently works (but I don't care that much). Daniel, would that be enough for you to fix this bug? If you want a user pref, please file a new bug for that.
Reporter | ||
Comment 13•23 years ago
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That is the worst case, so it would be a big win just to get rid of that. I just today noticed that there are a fourth way Bugzilla displays dates (yes I read your post badly, sorry), it's with just time. I would argue that that mode is also broken, and could at least be merged with the "weekday time" mode. I see no reason to have another date mode just for bugs changes recently. Also remember that we have many time zones so just a time might be confusing.
Comment 14•23 years ago
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Times are displayed everywhere in Bugzilla, and it's already confusing. That's nothing new (I have to add nine hours to all times diplayed here). There's probably already a bug filed about adding a pref for the time zone. That being said, this part was the most important thing to me when fixing that bug. I wanted to see in a buglist of recently changed bugs which one was changed when. Previously all bug had the same date there (today or yesterday).
Comment 15•23 years ago
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OK, re-reading the comments here, I think it's been generally agreed that getting rid of the month-day only version will make this 2.12 material. That's what this patch does. This has been checked in. r= justdave Any additional changes you want to request for this (like the preferences for it), please file a new bug.
Status: ASSIGNED → RESOLVED
Closed: 23 years ago
Resolution: --- → FIXED
Comment 16•23 years ago
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Moving closed bugs to Bugzilla product
Component: Bugzilla → Bugzilla-General
Product: Webtools → Bugzilla
Version: Bugzilla 2.11 → unspecified
Updated•12 years ago
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QA Contact: matty_is_a_geek → default-qa
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Description
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