[whatwg] Authoring feedback on <datalist>

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:42 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:

> It's also worth noting that <datalist> currently seems to be conceived
> as a combobox, while search suggestions deserve totally different UI.
> Opera's UI is suitable to search suggestions, but WebKit's proposed UI
> is inappropriate for them:
> 
> http://docs.google.com/View?id=dch3zh37_0cf8kc8c4
> 
> There's a little drop-down arrow you have to click to get the list,
> which is unexpected for search suggestions.  If a separate "suggest"
> IDL attribute were added, UAs could provide different UI for that and
> datalist.

I haven't reviewed that proposal closely, but I would expect <input type=text list=...> on Mac to use the standard Mac combobox control:

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Likewise on Windows it should show the standard combobox instead of what is pictured there.

I would expect <input type=search list=...> to not show any extra buttons, but simply use the list much the way search suggestions work in the Safari built-in search field.

It's not clear to me that suggest=... is needed.

Regards,
Maciej