I am working on a simple web app using nothing but Vanilla JS, HTML and CSS.
I have created a form, which contains multiple input fields of type "text". Now I want to add a datepicker. I have tried adding an input field of type "date", but I really don't like the design of this datepicker and I haven't found any way of styling the calendar that pops up when clicking into this field.
My first question is: Is there a way to style the calendar of an input field of type "date"?
As I assume the answer to this question is "no", I have searched for an alternative. There are multiple GitHub projects out there, designing a calendar. One example is this. This example requires adding the html-code to my webpage. Initially, I wouldn't show the calendar-div, for example by setting its style to display: none in my css file. I would have to add a listener- to an input field of type "text" as well and then upon clicking into this field display the calendar. But this would rearrange the input fields below this "datepicker", which I don't want. Is there a way to just display the calendar and let it overlap with its surroundings, for example the input fields below this "datepicker"-field?
I would also appreciate any well known alternatives to styling datepickers with nothing but Vanilla JS, HTML and CSS, if there are any.
You have done your research and the answer is: No.
<input type="date"> or <input type="datetime-local"> are HTML inputs and its up to the browser vendor (Google, Mozilla, Apple) to decide how to render them.
If you open your dev tools and enable shadow DOM, you can even inspect the nodes created by these inputs but it's not recommended styling them.
It's a Front-end developer's life in 2022 (and perhaps more years to come) to introduce datepicker dependency or create datepicker yourself if you want to have specific look or functionality. From my experience, datepickers are not that hard to make but it's all the corner cases and localized edge cases you have to look out for. So I think it's easier to just go with a dependency.
If you don't want to bring full-fledged framework just for the datepicker then there are various options if you search for them.
You might like modern web components and you could search for date picker created with web components. These do not require any framework, just a supported browser. They usually come with their own stylesheets and JS with ability for some customization, I'd try it out.
Related
Do you know an Angular datepicker which has input features like:
Keyboard navigation (e.g. keydown for previous day, keyup for next day) in the input field (so I don't mean in the datepicker popup)
Autocomplete, e.g. when you fill in 12/12 and tab away, it automatically fills in 12/12/2019
Keys for specific actions, e.g. T fills in today's date
Or a datepicker which can be easily customized to work like this?
I found that datepickers from libraries like Kendo and Syncfusion try to do too much and are therefore difficult to customize to our needs. They focus on the datepicker popup, while the input field is hard to work with without mouse.
(the old ASP.NET Peterblum components had all this user-friendly functionality which does not seem to be available in modern frameworks, see: http://peterblum.com/DES/DateAndTime.aspx#DateTextBox).
You can find some date-pickers written in angular here, https://angularscript.com/?s=datetime+picker+. Most of these are customizable as your needs. Thanks
I was wondering if it's at all possible to style the autocomplete box that appears from input fields.
( I know This question is the same but that doesnt have a answer and since its a few months old i figured i made a new post about it)
That image is of my login screen with the autocomplete box being all square and bulky compared to my input field. If it's not possible to style the box i'll simply turn autocomplette off but if it's at all possible i would be very interested.
New screenshot:
Yeah you can't do that since it's browser based. Here's a great example in jQuery that uses autocomplete. I use it all the time for sites - super slick.
http://www.devbridge.com/sourcery/components/jquery-autocomplete/
You can't modify the browsers' native functionality. Your best option is to find a plugin that overrides the autocomplete drop-down functionality and modify the code and style to your liking. Please take a look at jQuery's autocomplete plugin. http://jqueryui.com/autocomplete/#custom-data
Recently I have received a project to make a webpage comply with WCAG 2.0 Level A. The part that I am running into a problem at the moment is the datepicker component. The datepicker component allows the user to select the date in two ways. One way is to manually type in a date, for example, 04/06/2014. The other way is to select the small image beside it and a calendar would basically pop-up and the user can select the date from there.
While researching over the web, some people have suggested that we do not have to make the image part of the datepicker component accessible since the text-field itself provides an alternative for accessibility. Is this acceptable (First Question)?
If this is the right way to go, how do I make it so that accessibility technology like screen reader would ignore the image icon (Second Question)? I have also tried to research for this issue. Basically, if it was just an image, we could set the "alt" attribute to null. But this image is actually embedded inside an "anchor" tag (which makes the image click-able) therefore this practice is invalid (verified by achecker.ca).
Update: HTML5 Accessibility: aria-hidden and role=”presentation” answers the second question
Any thoughts would be helpful. Thank you
The answer to the first question depends on what the usability reason is for showing a visual calendar? If you are showing it so that users can select a date based on use cases like "first Friday in Month X" or something similar, then simply providing a text input, while making the page at least usable, does not make the page functionally equivalent for screen reader and keyboard-only users and therefore does not pass WCAG 2.
Your answer to the second question that you posted, works for screen readers (in terms of removing the aforementioned functionality) but it now presents a problem to sighted keyboard-only users. You are therefore still not WCAG 2 compliant.
Making date pickers accessible, while difficult, is possible. Are you using the jQuery UI datepicker?
I'm having trouble finding a simple js web UI library that handles styling the following right out of the box:
Buttons
Listboxes
Input Boxes
Dropdown Menus
Text Areas
Checkboxes
Radio Buttons
Alert Dialogs
Modal / Non-modal Windows
I can see various libraries offering styling but so far haven't found one that handles the aforementioned all at once. The reason why I'm looking for something that already contains support for all of the above in one go is because I've had previous experiences with different frameworks / libraries conflicting with each other because they weren't from the same developer / author.
So before jumping in and trying to mix and match those that I've found, I just want to make sure I haven't missed something good.
Consider Dojo: http://demos.dojotoolkit.org/demos/themePreviewer/demo.html
All of those widgets have styling "right out of the box." If that doesn't meet your needs, maybe you could be more specific about what you're trying to accomplish.
I am in the process of converting a Silverlight app into a standard Web app (ie all HTML, CSS and JavaScript via jQuery 1.4.4). I'm not the most experienced when it comes to web development, so I am wondering what would be the best way to convert this custom Silverlight control into a web equivalent?
It boils down to just being a fancy radio button group. The user can click on any type, and only one type can be selected at a time. For the web equivalent, it needs to set a value that will get POSTed to the server.
For now I am just using a standard <select> tag which is of course functional and doesn't require JavaScript (which is nice), but ultimately is not going to fly. I will place a <select> inside of a <noscript> tag to allow non-js people to still be functional.
Can anyone recommend a good approach for tackling this? Any existing plugins/controls out in the wild I could take advantage of?
(I am using ASP.NET MVC 3, but I don't think that's very relevant here)
I would use a <ul> and make the selections a <li>. Styling is easy enough to apply to that, and there are tons of samples online.
Place a click on the li using jQuery to disable. If you are going to disable other selections, you should also include a reset/clear type function to they can choose again in case they made a mistake.
Think of them as an array of buttons. When one is clicked, all others are unselected. Draw a rectangle around the one that was clicked and set a hidden form field equal to the value you expect when the form is submitted.