timeago
a jQuery plugin
What?
Timeago is a jQuery plugin that makes it easy to support automatically updating fuzzy timestamps (e.g. "4 minutes ago" or "about 1 day ago"). Download, view the examples, and enjoy.
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Ryan was born Dec 18, 1978.
How?
First, load jQuery and the plugin:
<script src="jquery.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="jquery.timeago.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
Now, let's attach it to your timestamps on DOM ready:
jQuery(document).ready(function() {
jQuery('abbr[class*=timeago]').timeago();
});
This will turn all abbr elements with a class of timeago and an ISO 8601 timestamp in the title:
<abbr class="timeago" title="2008-07-17T09:24:17Z">July 17, 2008</abbr>
into something like this:
<abbr class="timeago" title="2008-07-17T09:24:17Z">time ago</abbr>
As time passes, the timestamps will automatically update.
Why?
Timeago was originally built for use with Yarp.com (coming soon) to timestamp comments.
- Because timeago can refresh automatically, you won't have timestamps dated "1 minute ago" even though the page was opened 10 minutes ago.
- Because the fuzzy timestamps aren't calculated on the server, you can take full advantage of page caching in your web applications.
- You get to use microformats like the cool kids.
Who?
Timeago was built by Ryan McGeary while standing on the shoulders of giants. John Resig wrote about a similar approach. The verbiage was based on the distance_of_time_in_words ActionView helper in Ruby on Rails.
Where?
Download the "stable" release.
The code is hosted on GitHub: http://github.com/rmm5t/timeago. Go on, live on the edge.
When?
Timeago was conceived on July 17, 2008. (Yup, that's powered by timeago too)