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

[George Lund]

In message <851c8d31040715012725a3256a at mail.gmail.com>, Jim Ley 
<jim.ley at gmail.com> writes
>On Wed, 14 Jul 2004 23:27:22 +0100, George Lund <george at lund.co.uk> wrote:
>>    If Not IsDate(myform.mydatetime.value) Then Exit Sub
>
>This fails for a number of my examples, please try again,

Of your examples, the two it didn't work for were "4th July 04" and 
"1.091574000e+12".  Of those two, I reckon 'twould be very rare for 
anyone to type the "th" and expect a computer to understand; without the 
"th" it works fine.  The second I just didn't get the point of.  It 
isn't a date, it's a number.

> please also
>remember that reyling on regional settings is not something I've
>generally seen developers do (for example if I'm using a web-cafe
>machine, or even a desktop in the Bangalore office, how will the user
>even know the local format to enter.)

Now that's just picking holes.  Your comment - to which I was replying - 
indicated that you *wanted* regional differences to be taken into 
account.  The whole point of all this is to give the user an experience 
that makes most sense to them in *their* context.

The user doesn't have to know the local format to enter if they are 
prepared to enter a non-ambiguous format.  The point of my example was 
that *if* the user _did_ enter an ambiguous format, then best one could 
do would be to guess from the locale. Microsoft's code handles 
non-ambiguous dates as you would expect, uh, non-ambiguously :-)

(Trust me, if you are trying to make a web browser in a foreign country 
work this would be the least of your worries.  Finding where the keys 
are on the keyboard is generally a bigger problem in my experience!)

-- 
George
PS I'd prefer replies on the list only if that's okay. thanks