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From: Rich <rich@example.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Desktop file "flies" away
Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2024 14:06:23 -0000 (UTC)
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Nuno Silva <nunojsilva@invalid.invalid> wrote:
> On 2024-08-30, Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> 
>>
>> It's time all user interfaces insisted on ISO 8601 dates.
>> I first realized over 50 years ago that year-month-day
>> is the only reasonable date format.  It sorts better,
>> and it's less likely to trigger the month/day vs. day/month
>> confusion.
>>
>> I agree that all data entry code should incorporate
>> brutally thorough validation routines.
> 
> There's now apparently a trend in UIs to go with morphing different
> formats, based on how recently something happened.
> 
> My 2c are: either make that a note next to the proper timestamp (that
> one in a consistent format), or show only the proper timestamp. I rarely
> want the "how many seconds/minutes ago was this" information in a
> time-of-event field, and when I want it, I'll have much less trouble
> computing it from, say, YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS in UTC.
> 
> Even if you put the proper timestamp as a tooltip, my 2c are that it
> should be the other way around. Make "X minutes ago" the tooltip.

Yes, this groupie /trend/ is horrible.  eBay did this for auction end 
times somewhere around 1.5 or so years ago.  All auctions were shown 
as:

Ends in 47 minutes

And, worse, for auctions that ended a few days away, it 'rounded up' to 
just "Ends in 5 days" -- with no idea /when/ on the 5th day it ended.

I complained at them via their feedback links (and I suspect lots of 
others did too) because very soon after leaving feedback the auctions 
changed to:

Ends in 5 days  Sunday 11:23pm

So whatever designer had made the change to "ends in 5 days" got to 
take credit on their yearly accomplishments for the "relative times" 
(although, preferably, they should have been fired instead) and 
everyone who wanted to know the exact point in time (i.e., everyone 
actually using ebay) got to know when to set their own alarm reminders 
(outside ebay) to check on the current bid price.

With how soon the exact point display returned, either they were 
already making the change, or more likely there were thousands if not 
millions of feedback items saying "bring back the exact end time".


This of course is exactly the problem with companies that employ 
"designers" who don't also "dog-food".  They must make changes lest the 
finance folks start asking why we are paying their salaries and not 
receiving anything in return, and as nearly all don't ever use the item 
they are designing for, they don't see the idiot mistakes they make 
with their changes.