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

[Jim Ley]

On Sat, 17 Jul 2004 16:34:53 +0200, Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen
<hallvors at online.no> wrote:
> On 16 Jul 2004 at 21:16, Jim Ley wrote:
> 
> > > The second I just didn't get the point of.  It
> > > isn't a date, it's a number.
> >
> > The point of that one is that it's very often accepted by user agents
> > that use javascript new Date() constructs (and similar)
> 
> Why is it a problem that a number no user would ever type in as a
> date could be parsed as one by a javascript function?

because users sometimes type 15072004 or similar which is accepted by
new Date not as 15th of July 2004 which the user likely suggested.

> 2) in order to format and display the date in a non-ambiguous way to
> the user so that the user can spot errors and correct a date that has
> been misunderstood.

Yes this approach can work, but it means your introducing an extra
stage, when you could just a more sensible input method that prevents
users from being ambigous.

I've suggested an approach similar to the select combo approach
whereby we can have more complicated degradation than just a text box,
I've no idea why no-one else considers this, but instead tries to
convince me that a text box is a perfectly suitable format for
entering dates, despite the fact they've yet to come up with an
example.

Jim.