Improvements for date filter on projects page

[martinszy]

The date filter is very odd.
Bug 1: I can't have an approximate date. If I just wite "2008" in the field, it explodes.
Bug 2: The calendar does not allow traversal by year, so if I want to go 3 years back, I have to click 36 times in the back arrow.
Bug 3: I don't know how many projects are there for any given timeframe before I search, so I'm exposed to having a frustrating experience for failing to find any projects... even if I miss for just one day.

So a new interface can solve all this problems, or we can just fix them one by one.

My proposal would be to use something similar to this Thunderbird date filter:

This allows the user to see how many result items are there for any date, and he can avoid filtering to zero results.

Here's a full document on this example: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/global-search

Also, a screen with "handles" to select the period would be good, like Google Analytics used o have.

Full text on the example: http://konigi.com/interface/google-analytics-date-selector