Which way is up?

You’re looking at the interface for selecting the publish date in WordPress. With it, you can backdate posts, schedule posts to be published in the future, or tell it to post your entry right now. It’s a simple enough interface that has an annoying quirk.

The day and year entry fields are, as you can see, numeric. But if I click on the Year field, for example, and hit the Up arrow key, the year is increased. That is, 2008 becomes 2009, etc. And if I hit the Down arrow key, the year is decreased. It’s a nice convenience feature. That feature works on the Day entry field, as well. That’s really nice when I make a post that I want published in a day or two.

And then there’s the Month entry field. Pressing the Up arrow in that field decreases the month! Really. If I tab over to that field and hit the Up arrow, the month turns to April. Ugh!

Don’t get me wrong, I understand why it works that way: the Month entry field is a combo box that has the months listed in order, from January through December. And if you click on the combo box the list of months drops down and you can scroll through them with the up and down arrow keys. In isolation it makes perfect sense. In combination with the Day and Year entry fields, though, it’s maddening. If I want tomorrow or next year, I hit the Up arrow. If I want next month I hit the Down arrow. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh!