[whatwg] a few comments to Webforms 2.0 Call For Comments

[Matthew Raymond]

Olav Junker Kjær wrote:
>>    You could argue it's illegal (although I have no idea why it would 
>>be), but that's pointless, since a control like a slider has to have a 
>>default value. Now that I think about it, this could be used as an 
>>argument why sliders shouldn't be used for <input type="range">, 
>>although I don't really by that argument myself.
> 
> It is clearly illegal since in section 2.1 it says: "By default, all of
> these new types, just like the types from HTML4, must have no value
> selected, unless a default value is provided using the value attribute."

    So you're using the WF2 spec to defeat a suggestion for the WF2 
spec?  Hmm...

> Perhaps we need feedback from implementers whether is possible to design a
> usable slider control with an "undefined" state. If not, either an
> explicit value could be required for range fields, or it could be allowed
> for range controls to choose a default value. The last option is probably
> best, since implementations would have to handle missing values somehow
> anyway, whether they are illegal or not.

    If there's going to be an implicit default value, how to determine 
that value must be defined in the spec. Otherwise, the webmaster will 
never know what to expect the value of the slider to be. If users 
typically don't even change the value of the "range" control, you could 
have different values for that control purely based on what UA the user has.

    I really don't know how you'd enforce the requirement of a default 
value, though. Look at |alt| attributes. They're required, yet how often 
do webmasters not include this property? I suspect most UAs will simply 
violate such a restriction.