The UX of Date Entry

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/via http://turnoff.us/geek/annoying-software-3/
This one really gets my goat. Yes, I know, UX is hard etc. etc., but even a little bit of googling will come up with some core principles for date entry.
And of these principles, the one that should stand above all (for me at least!) is that you should not require users to enter special characters to format dates.
Oh, if you want to show people a greyed-out /, that’s fine, go for it. But making them enter it? Ugh!

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