[whatwg] Suggested changes to Web Forms 2.0, 2004-07-01 working

[Jim Ley]

On Sat, 10 Jul 2004 10:19:37 -0400, Matthew Raymond
<mattraymond at earthlink.net> wrote:
> Jim Ley wrote:
> > How to provide legacy clients with appropriate information without
> > confusing WF2 clients.
> 
>    To my knowledge, the above is only a problem when dealing with
> <input type="date"> and other similar input types. Someone already
> proposed a solution for this involving a new attribute called |format|:
> 
> <label for="date1">Date (Format: MM-DD-YYYY): </label>
> <input type="date" name="date1" id="date1" format="MM-DD-YYYY">
> 
>    The |format| attribute forces a WF2 client to use a specific format
> for both user input and submission.

If we do this, then we lose all benefits of consistency, which is
what's been proposed as the main motivation for these new types.

Also it removes the (suggested) advantages of allowing the user to
enter a date (and yes all my comments apply to datetime just as much
as just date) in a different timezone to the submitted date.  So I
don't think this proposal will work.  In any case it's not in the spec
is it!

> > How to suggest the appearance of the widgets by the author (who is in
> > the best position to know the task involved).
> 
>    I don't see where a problem exists here. The <input> element still
> has all the existing CSS 2.1 properties.

Doesn't solve anything, there's nothing in CSS 2.1 relevant to styling
datetime widgets into their different tasks.

> which is beyond the scope of Web Forms 2.0.

Perhaps, but without such, then WF2 doesn't become usable (and I'm not
alone in saying this, see many other people doing so.)

Jim.