What's the best approach to get Date/Time input from the user?

Question

This is a wheel that\'s been re-invented again and again over the years.

The Problem: The user needs to input a Date/Time

Basic considerations

Answer 1

I really like the way QT4's Date/Time widget works.

• You can enter dates manually (type in the date, in common formats).
• You can use your scroll wheel to quickly change date/time fields.
• You have an expandable calendar that has drop down months and forward/backward arrows for the months. You can click on specific days and enter the year manually, or with a combo box (scroll wheel works here too).

Here is a short video (~7.5MB) that shows how the widget works and what some of its features are: Video Here

I would expect any sophisticated application to have some or all of these features.

Being able to enter relative dates (today, last week, 3 days ago) is handy, but I'm not sure how practical it would be, given standard questions like "What is your date of birth?", or "When would you like X emailed to you?".