Reimagine the Date Picker
Wayyyyy back in 2012 I created the best date picker in the world! Pikaday on GitHub revels in 8k braggadocious stars but this year we decided to archive the project. Pikaday was old and tired. Personally I had successfully ignored it for years.
In 2025 if you need a date picker use the native HTML element.
<input type="date">Simple as that. There are few acceptable reasons not to!
Unless… what if you don’t need a calendar widget at all?
Pikaday is Reborn!
Pikaday website mockup with various date and time form patterns
Complex UI leads to more errors and abandoned forms. There are easier ways to pick a date than a calendar widget. This guide provides alternate ideas and aims to send developers on a path towards user-friendly interfaces.
Pikaday - by me!
Pikaday is no longer a JavaScript date picker. Pikaday is now a friendly guide for front-end developers. I want to push developers away from the classic date picker entirely. Especially fat JavaScript libraries.
Those calendar widgets are finicky. Worse, developers try to shoehorn additional features like range selection across multiple calendars. Horrific stuff!
I’ve seen noble attempts to make a more accessible date picker. There are a few that have built-in keyboard shortcut guides. Technically they may be “accessible” but if your bespoke component comes with a user manual, one has to question the real-world usability.
It doesn’t have to be so complicated!
Visit pikaday.dbushell.com (or pikaday.com for as long as I renew) to learn more. This guide is a work in progress. I plan to update and extend it based on feedback.
Let me know what you think and please share on the socials :)
If you want to go in the opposite direction try an idea from the Bad UX World Cup! My losing entry was a canvas blackhole. I wanted to add a light-bending WebGL effect but I had neither the time nor skill to attempt it.