I am trying out the Tor Browser. I have the following setting checked
Use your operating system settings for "English (Australia)" to format dates, times, numbers, and measurements.
So I expect to see dates like 17/7/2021. Instead I am seeing 7/17/2021.
When I access SOL using Chrome or Firefox, I see dates like 17/7/2021.
This may be a bug in Tor, or some incorrect interaction between Tor and SOL.
Ian
I wasn't aware before that Tor is based on Firefox code. I see that Firefox also displays dates in the form 7/17/2021 even though I have the same setting as I have in the Tor browser.
So as best I can see, it is a Firefox bug.
Ian
Interesting.
I am using a Firefox-ESR based browser and was also seeing the mm/dd/yyyy date format up until a couple of minutes ago.
User Interface Language was English (US) but is now English (UK).
Date and Time Formatting was and is English (UK).
Firefox itself does not seem to have two separate settings here.
It seems as though the date formatting functions SOL uses use the first of those settings rather than the second. I don't know enough about web interfaces to know if SOL even has a choice there, but I believe those settings used to work until I updated the browser back in November.
Very interesting. Using Firefox (*) on a Linux system. there are two separate settings under the heading 'Language'. The first is to 'choose the language used to display messages, menus and notifications', and, yes, by changing that to English (UK), dates display as I expect. The second is to 'choose your preferred language for displaying pages', with a checkbox for "Use your operating system settings for "English (Australia)" to format dates, times, numbers, and measurements." Firefox (and Tor) ignore this second option.
Thank you for pointing out to me that the first choice is what I need !
Ian
(*) Firefox was updated in the last month or so, I think. I don't use it much so I can't say if, or when, its behaviour in displaying dates changed.
There was a "major update" to my browser back then and I noticed this change in behaviour immediately, the minor changes since had not altered anything. I know - to within a day - when that major update arrived.
My browser also has the third option (your second option) but I only changed the setting there after having fixed the problem yesterday.
It's a combination of which JavaScript function is used and what system and browser settings it uses. For example I have set my system to EN(US) but my locale is set to Europe/Amsterdam because I'm in the Netherlands.
Date and time here on the forum are displayed as dd/mm/yyyy hh.mm.ss My locale settings makes the d/m/y order but the other formatting comes from the US setting. The JavaScript function that is used is toLocalString().
ReaderInfo displays my dates as "22 July 2021" because the language is US English but my locale setting makes it "dd month yyyy" instead of "July 21, 2021" which US visitors will see. A different JavaScript function is used.
ReaderInfo displays my dates as "22 July 2021" because the language is US English but my locale setting makes it "dd month yyyy" instead of "July 21, 2021" which US visitors will see.
Yeah, month / day / year doesn't make a lot of sense, but we've been using for a long time and are used to it.
Personally, I don't think day month year is that much better.
If I was going to switch, I'd go for year month day. So 2021, July 21.
As an added bonus, YMD gives correct date sorting with much less effort on text date fields.
Personally, I don't think day month year is that much better.
If I was going to switch, I'd go for year month day. So 2021, July 21.
As an added bonus, YMD gives correct date sorting with much less effort on text date fields.
I agree. Sorting is usually no problem because dates are mostly stored as a timestamp, yyyymmddHHMMSS, or the ISO 8601 format, always in UTC, all of which are logically sortable by default. User interfaces require that you display according to the user's settings and in most cases taking the users time zone into consideration too so every displayed date has to be converted anyway. This is mostly taken care of by JavaScript because it works on the client side and thus has access to the user settings for the date formatting.
Sorting is usually no problem because dates are mostly stored as a timestamp
There are older systems in the US that have dates stored as character/text strings (in MDY format) those are a pain in the ass to sort correctly.
There are older systems in the US that have dates stored as character/text strings (in MDY format) those are a pain in the ass to sort correctly.
Yup, most very old and likely set up that way because either the specifications demanded it or because the designer didn't know a world existed outside of the US :D
Yup, most very old and likely set up that way because either the specifications demanded it or because the designer didn't know a world existed outside of the US :D
Most of them are custom systems built for purely in-house use by US based corporations not in the Software Industry. Even being aware of the world outside the US, internationalization was something they had exactly zero reason to consider.