[whatwg] Comment on Forms 2.0: OPTGROUP Nesting

[Matthew Thomas]

On 1 Jul, 2004, at 12:49 AM, Ian Hickson wrote:
> ...
> I did some research into the matter and it turns out that no existing 
> browser correctly parses nested OPTGROUPs. They basically all parse 
> OPTGROUP as if it had an optional end tag. So it wouldn't be possible 
> to allow nested OPTGROUPs, sadly.

Such a control doesn't even exist (that I've seen) in native Microsoft 
Windows applications, because on that OS option menus are implemented 
as "drop-down listboxes", and listboxes don't have submenus.

> ...
> Most use cases of trees don't seem to be directly related to form 
> submission, though, so we're probably going to optimise its design for 
> the interaction case rather than for the form submission case.
> ...

Use cases of submittable outline selections:
*   Country > City/Region/State
     -   international airline sites
     -   signup page for any site using MS Passport, e.g.
         Hotmail (currently it reloads for every choice, ugh)
     -   dating sites
     -   timeanddate.com
*   Product > Component/Version
     -   bug databases, e.g. Bugzilla
     -   knowledge bases, e.g. support.microsoft.com
*   category > subcategory > search within this category
     -   Yahoo Directory
     -   Google Directory
     -   Open Directory
     -   eBay.

It seems to me that it would be used more often than (for example) the 
proposed time input field.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/