One of the elements of this feature set was to enable users to set an end date for their gift lists. After that date (but not before!) they'll be able to see which items were bought for them by friends and family.
Dates on the web are a bit tricky as we pesky humans have invented all sorts of different ways to represent them. Month first (US), day first (UK), month as a word, year as two digits or four, dashes or slashes, the list is endless. I often wonder how many websites think my birthday is in October...
I looked into various options for glisty from allowing users free form input and just doing my best with it at the back end (similar to Remember the Milk's cool interface) to putting in 3 explicit boxes for day month and year using drop downs. In the end I decided on a simple in between. Pick a format, state that up front and re-enforce it during entry, and finally use Javascript to parrot back my interpretation of your entry in a universally understandable form in real time.
Here are some screen grabs showing the flow.
State the format up front.
Re-enforce it during entry.
My interpretation of what you input (is it correct?)It's not perfect (could add support for the other punctuation types), but it's a good way to help users get their data into the system without any nasty surprises.
This sort of instant feedback loop is one of the things that Javascript (plus DOM) is really good at. Judicious use of it helps users and developers alike.