[Sigia-l] Date ranges

[Avi Rappoport]

It seems vaguely useful to have fewer things on the list to scan through.

May I suggest an alternate approach of defining some useful time 
periods?  I like "in the last week", "in the two weeks", "in the last 
month",  and "in the last year": customize as appropriate for your 
audience.   Truly an innovative way to approach date-ranges: I wish I 
could say I thought that up, but it's used by Apple's Sherlock, 
HotBot and Inktomi Search software.

Avi

At 1:09 PM -0400 4/24/02, Charles Hanson wrote:
>I'm wondering if anyone has any experience judging the usability of 
>"from" and "to" date range selection while executing a search. 
>
>The database to be searched contains documents that are "in the 
>past," as well as items (events) that are "in the future," and the 
>pull-down date ranges available are meant to encompass both.
>
>We had started with the idea of creating a dynamic relationship 
>between the two boxes, so that you would never get the error that 
>would result from your having selected an invalid range with the 
>"to" date earlier than the "from". 
>
>But in order to truly make the NO INVALID RANGE rule work, the 
>dynamic relationship would have to be two way instead of one.  So 
>the selection of a date in the "To" field would elminate all dates 
>later than it in the "From" box.  I'm not sure whether that's a good 
>idea.  It feels a little unnecessarily restrictive, but perhaps it's 
>just me.
>
>Has anyone else experienced this?  If so, can anyone recommend a 
>solution/approach /opinion?
>
>Many thanks,
>Charles

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