X hours ago vs date and time

[classicdrogn]

Is it possible to put a proper dateline on everything, instead of having that godawful annoying "X hours ago" that shows up any time a post falls between 59m59s and 12h59s? It's one of those minor things that generates annoyance al out of proportion, at least for me... maybe some people like it?

If I'm outvoted, fair enough, and I wouldn't call it high priority anyway, but it always seems bassackwards and a bit condescending to have posts' age clumped up into X hours when older ones show a precise time, as if anyone who made it out of kindergarten shouldn't be able to compare two times if they really want to know how long ago something was posted rather than just "before or after my 'last visited' dateline."

fake edit: okay, probably second grade these days, with how the US education system is going. Still well below the usual user's education level in any forum I can think of, doubly so here with the general focus on literature, a relatively complex MMO, and politics.

[Bob Schroeck]

Understand first that I didn't write the board software. I can look through the options to see if this is something I can simply toggle, but failing that, I would need to find where in the literally hundreds of PHP scripts that make up the board that this resides in. Once I do find it, well, that's no guarantee. I've never actually learned PHP, and while I have had some limited success with modifying one or two of the template files, I will make no promises that I will be able to puzzle out what needs doing.

[classicdrogn]

Sounds ugh. I was hoping the page templates would be simpler than that... Well, if you're willing to look, thanks for taking the time. Don't drive yourself nuts with it or anything, though!

[Labster]

You can paste this into your console on each page to reveal the dates:

$('.post_date > :first-child').each( function () { if(this.title) this.innerHTML += " " + this.title + " "; } );

[classicdrogn]

Paste it into the what now?

(Help me, Googleman!)

(...)

There's a console output window available under Tools > Browser Tools > Browser Console, but it doesn't accept input beyond selecting filters as far as I can tell. (Using the Manjaro Linux build of 'fox 103.0)

[Labster]

Nah, you got the right window. You just need to look for the >> in inline mode, or the 1 in multi-line mode. It's probably not what you want anyway, unless you're doing something special, or adding it to a user script to work more permanently.

Basically the forum does output the date and time, it's just hidden. If you hover your mouse over the time (no one uses phone browsers, right?), you can see it. So it shouldn't be too hard to make a user script to make it visible on every page load.

Anyway I posted a security vulnerability today so it might convince Bob to look at the website code after all.

[Jinx999]

I find it useful for looking for forums that have updated overnight / since I last checked.

If they were all date, it would add a layer of calculations.

[classicdrogn]

Oh? Having it is what I find causes the extra layer of calculation -- I have to look at the current time and the "Last Visited" line and figure out how many hours it's been, where having normal date and times is jus before or after the Last Visit time. Just shows to go ya, I guess

[Bob Schroeck]

Okay, I went digging through the board configuration options earlier this evening, and there's nothing that lets me toggle that on and off. If it's a really big deal, I can start trolling through the board code.

[classicdrogn]

Don't go nuts, it's just a minor friction point that would be nice if it wasn't too much trouble to fix. Actually, I may have asked about it before, thinking back... and may well again with a few years to forget about it. Feel free to smack me with a rolled up newspaper if so.