Topic on Talk:XTools

Frustrating page history auto-calendar

4
Summary by MusikAnimal

XTools uses your browser's calendar widget. The issue reported here appears to be with the user's browser, not XTools.

Spideog (talkcontribs)

Since the page history analysis tool (xtools.wmflabs.org/articleinfo) has been upgraded to automatically display a calendar to choose a date from for the "from" and "to" dates, the tool has become very frustrating to use because the user is no longer allowed to simply type in a distant date in the past. Now, the editor is forced to tap (on a mobile phone) the back button to scroll through potentially dozens of calendars for months to reach a year in the past, such as 2010. To reach January 2010 from December 2020 requires tapping on the back button 120 times. The user of the tool should be allowed simply to type in the date of his choice. You will add, potentially, years to my life by restoring this old way of doing things. Thank you. O'Dea (talk) 15:12, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

MusikAnimal (talkcontribs)

XTools is just showing a standard date input. The calendar is implemented by your browser and/or phone. On Android 11 you can click on the year independently of the month and day, so it's only a few taps to go back to 2010. I would check if your phone has the same capability (it should), as I agree it is an odd and sub-par experience to force you to scroll month-by-month. You could also try a different browser to see if it has better date handling.

It's also worth noting the date inputs are optional. Simply leave them blank to show all-time stats.

Hope this helps.

Spideog (talkcontribs)

Replying to "The calendar is implemented by your browser and/or phone."

Hmm, stroking my chin here. I don't find any germane "calendar settings" either in my phone settings or in my browser settings.

On other Wikipedia and Xtools pages, as well as date-input boxes on lots of other websites (e.g. https://www.timeanddate.com/date/weekday.html) I find that when I tap in a textbox to enter a date that I can simply type any date I want on top of the mm/dd/yy prompt within the box.

Replying to "It's also worth noting the date inputs are optional. Simply leave them blank to show all-time stats."

Thanks for this; it is worth noting. O'Dea (talk) 05:16, 31 December 2020 (UTC)

MusikAnimal (talkcontribs)

I doubt your device or browser has many calendar settings; rather, I find it hard to believe it forces you to swipe month by month. Perhaps there is a way to switch the year more easily (in the calendar dialog, does tapping on the year do anything?). What device and browser are you using?

Here is another example of a date input (that is <input type=date />). Your phone should give you the same calendar you see on XTools: https://codepen.io/MusikAnimal/full/PoGQOBW

Wikipedia and the example you give use normal text inputs and implement their own calendars. I think this is mostly because they intend to support very old browsers that don't implement calendars. We can do this on XTools too, but it's a lot of JavaScript to do something most browsers can do natively and quite well at that.