[whatwg] Alternative datepicker syntax

[Ian Hickson]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004, Matthew Thomas wrote:
>>
>> I'm not interested in widget looks - I'm interested in a date control
>> being 3 fields, since that is what users understand - can CSS do this?
>
> There's actually a good point here. A vanilla text control isn't
> necessarily the best thing for a datepicker to degrade to in non-WF2
> clients.

True, and while such UAs are a concern, it would probably be worth not
using the new date-related types.


> [snip proposed syntax]

I don't really see that the advantage of this (more graceful fallback)
outweighs the disadvantages (massively more complex markup, much harder to
test, no simplification on the server side).


> So the question is, which probability is greater for the average person
> using a non-WF2 UA?
> (1) that they'll be skilled enough to enter an ISO date,
>      complete with Ts and Zs;
> (2) that the author will remember to include and test a
>      non-WF2 fallback.

Neither of these is required; servers can instead support free-form date
entry heuristics to handle legacy UAs.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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