[whatwg] Default values for step

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Fri Jun 25 14:19:53 PDT 2004


On Fri, 25 Jun 2004, Will Levine wrote:
>
> Right now, my mind is stuck and I can't think of any uses for a number
> input outside of an order form (which would require integers the
> majority of the time), but I am sure that there must be many forms that
> wouldn't want only integers. Constraining input by default doesn't seem
> like the right solution.

There has to be a default step. Why would one pick a default that wasn't
the most common choice?


> For date and datetime, you can submit years with more than four digits.
> Why don't we constrain the years in dates by default? I think planning
> 8000 years in advance is less common then allowing non-integer input.
> Dates far in the future (or in the past) would probably frustrate most
> scheduling programs like fractional numbers would screw up the ordering
> program.

That is the "max" attribute. I suppose we could default "max" to some date
in the future, but it doesn't seem like there is a single date that is
particularly common as the maximum.


> Is there any time one would need to be precise to the second in a Web
> app or are you just including the stuff about seconds and fractions of
> seconds because you want to use an existing standard? Will using this
> standard make it easier for server-side scripts to parse the date/time?
> If we do need to use this existing standard, could we just ignore
> seconds and tell the UA to only ever ask for time precise to the minute
> and just submit that time with 00.0 seconds? This would seem ideal to
> me. I can think of a few cases where time in seconds would be important,
> but nothing that one would put in a Web app.

Sub-second accuracy is useful in scientific applications.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'



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