[whatwg] Proposal for a combined input control

[Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen]

On 23 Jul 2004 at 22:37, Jim Ley wrote:

> > This control would be useful for entering long numbers such as credit
> > card info or serial numbers, input focus could automatically pass to the
> > next box in the group to speed up data entry. 
> 
> Are there any studies which actually shows this is easier - because
> the OS IP entry control is the one I have most problems with, I find
> the auto-focusing really hard to use.

The autofocus in the IP dialog IS hard to use - because the computer 
doesn't take into account that some parts of the IP address 
frequently have less than 3 digits. So, sometimes we want to move the 
focus after one or two digits and there isn't an obvious way to do 
that except using the mouse.

I think the original suggestion sounds very interesting though. As 
Jim says it would be nice for dates too. I vote for the INPUTGROUP 
element although I think for backwards compatibility we should just 
let the UA submit all three inputs separately. The servers have to 
deal with that anyway for legacy so there's very little gain in 
making life more complicated for the UA with some patterns for 
combining the values.
-- 
Hallvord R. M. Steen