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Re: Date & time formats used in posts

 
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Chris H
Honored Contributor

Date & time formats used in posts

The HP ITRC forums display timestamps in the form "MMM dd, yyyy hh:mm:ss TZ".

 

e.g. Jul 15, 2010 17:02:25 GMT

 


The Business support forums used to use the same format but, with the new site, now display dates in the format mm-dd-yyyy

 

e.g. 07-15-2010

 

... and the times are now displayed using a 12-hour clock, but without specifying a time zone.

 

The times DO appear to take account of a 'signed-in' user's registered location; for example, one post is timestamped:

 

07-15-2010 09:32 AM

 

if viewed before signing in, but as:

 

07-15-2010 05:32 PM

 

and claiming to be '"two hours ago" (with my local time of 07:40 PM BST (GMT+daylight savings)) if viewed after I've signed in (with my registered location as 'UK').

 

So the site appears to recognise my location in order to adjust the displayed time (although it would be nice if it displayed the timezone name as well, and used the 24-hour clock, as per the old site).

 

 

But it doesn't use the location information to change the date format to the UK one (i.e 15-07-2010 instead of 07-15-2010).

 

To foist the US format on everyone else is confusing, and impolite!

 

 

I'd prefer to be able to specify the date format - my personal preference would be for me to see dates in the ISO format yyyy-mm-dd

 

e.g. 2010-07-15

 

because this format is used in most of the world (except US and UK), and also sorts naturally as text (e.g. within filenames).

 

Having said that, I admit that the old site format of MMM-dd-yyyy (e.g. Jul 15-2010) is perhaps less confusing than the ISO format to those used to the US (mm-dd-yyyy) or UK (dd-mm-yyyy) 'short' formats.

2 REPLIES 2
Chris H
Honored Contributor

Re: Date & time formats used in posts

Just for the record, the timestamp of the original message (above) is displayed as:

 

07-15-2010 08:01 PM

 

if viewed when I'm signed-in (registered location UK)..   

Kevin_Paul
HPE Pro
Solution

Re: Date & time formats used in posts

Chris - if you access your profile, and then select "Preferences" and "Display", you'll find some options for changing the way dates are displayed.  There is also an option for "Use relative dates" on the same screen, which is what can turn on/off the "2 days ago" type indicators and simply use dates regardless of the age of the post.

 

Also under preferences, under "Personal Options" is the selection for time zone - although it sounds like that should be set correctly for you already, based on your HP Passport account.

I work for HPE.