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<h1>Comments to Web Forms 2.0 downloaded 2004-09-18</h1>
<p>I read the working draft and have some comments. I classified the
comments in Major, Medium, and Minor. Before you disgard the Major
ones I would really like to have a chance to argue for them. I would
say that they are essential if you would like to use Web Forms 2.0
for more advanced forms.</p>
<p>Regards,</p>
<p>Mattias Waldau</p>
<h2>All controls that support disabled should support readonly
(Major)</h2>
<p>Readonly checkboxes, drop-down menus, buttons etc are needed if
you want to be able to present the user with a receipt that looks
exactly like the webpage he/she filled in. For an example see
<a href="http://www.exceleverywhere.com/test/webforms2/webforms2.htm">http://www.exceleverywhere.com/test/webforms2/webforms2.htm</a>,
where you get a receipt after pressing submit. Normally this webpage
would be emailed to you. Note that the webpage is stripped from all
logic, the QTY-field is readonly, however, we cannot prevent the user
from checking/unchecking the Express Shipping checkbox.</p>
<p>Workarounds and why they are not good enough:</p>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Use JavaScript to restore the old value. This solution will not
work when sent as email, since all email readers block JavaScript</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Using images for checkboxes etc in the receipt. Problem: Where
should the images be stored? Should they be part of the emailed?</p>
</li>
</ol>
<h2>Controls with negative TABINDEX should be ignored during tabbing
(Major)</h2>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Internet Explorer has a very nice
feature, controls with negative TABINDEX are skipped during tabbing.
Without this feature, tab-wrap around, ie. When you have reached the
bottom-most control, you jump to the first control will not work.
Instead you tab through a lot of uninteresting controls.</p>
<h2>It should be possible to use ENTER to navigate through fields
(Major)</h2>
<p>All software except browser just Enter to jump to the next
control. For some reason web form uses tab only and Enter means
submit. This might seem to be a small thing, but I know from personal
experience that this is a showstopper form some companies.</p>
<p>Therefor it would be nice to if Enter could be used for
navigation.</p>
<h2>AUTOCOMPLETE should apply to all input controls (Medium)</h2>
<p>It seems that autocomplete doesn't apply to radio buttons and
checkboxes, why? If I entered data and the browser remembers them, it
should remember all of them.</p>
<h2>OUTPUT-fields should be part of a submit (Minor)</h2>
<p>According to 5.1 an OUTPUT is not an successful control and will
therefor not be part of a submit. Is this correct?</p>
<p>If so, I think this is a bad idea. If you look at <a
href="http://www.exceleverywhere.com/test/webforms2/webforms2.htm">http://www.exceleverywhere.com/test/webforms2/webforms2.htm</a>,
the total fields are typically coontrols that should have been
OUTPUT. However, if this is an order form, it is important for the
merchant to know what total was presented to the user. Therefor,
calculated values need also be send by the submit. (This doesn't mean
that the merchant should trust the values since the webpage can have
been manipulated.)</p>
<h2>Do OUTPUT-fields have a TABINDEX? (Minor)</h2>
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">If not, they need to have it. If you
have very long forms, and the bottom part is a big presentation of
calculated values, you need to be able to scroll down. The best way
is to set a tabstop and one of the OUTPUT-controls. </p>
<h2>It should be possible to prevent ENTER from submitting data
(Minor)</h2>
<p>An office worker uses the Enter key thousand of times per day.
Therefor, preventing Enter from doing something very drastical like
submitting should be possible.</p>
<h1>About Mattias Waldau</h1>
<p>Mattias Waldau is the main developer of ExcelEverywhere.
ExcelEverywhere
creates web forms from spreadsheets, so you can say that we use Excel
as an IDE for creating forms. JavaScript is used to handle the
calculations. Typical use is creating order forms, quotes, surveys,
technical calculators for engineering. No Excel is needed once the
webform is created.</p>
<p>We have several 1500 separate customers and I have personnally
seen several thousand web forms.</p>
<p><br>
<br>
</p>
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