[whatwg] Comments to Web Forms 2.0 downloaded 2004-09-18 (HTML email)

[Paul Norman]

On 21-Nov-04, at 12:20 PM, Mattias Waldau wrote:

> Paul Norman wrote:
>> On 20-Sep-04, at 8:24 AM, Mattias Waldau wrote:
>>> It should be possible to use ENTER to navigate through fields (Major)
>>>
>>> All software except browser just Enter to jump to the next control. 
>>> For some reason web form uses tab only and Enter means submit. This 
>>> might seem to be a small thing, but I know from personal experience 
>>> that this is a showstopper form some companies.
>>>
>>> Therefor it would be nice to if Enter could be used for navigation.
>> All the software I've used uses enter dismiss dialog boxes or forms
>> except for when the user might want to have enter as content (e.g. 
>> ICQ)
>> No software I've used uses enter to switch between fields of a form
>> except for Lynx where you can sometimes use enter.
>
> You talk about MS Windows/Motif/Mac like applications, and they have 
> the ENTER behavior you talk about.
And I use a Mac so I'd expect my browser to be consistent with other
applications (i.e. use enter or return to submit a form). I'd certainly
not want to use an application that changed this behaviour.
>  However, if you look at OLDER applications you see that enter means 
> next field.
Enter and return have been used for as long as I can remember on the 
Mac.
You also claimed all software except for browsers uses enter to go 
between
form fields.
> Why do you think the enter key is placed on the numeric keypad?
I'm not sure on that.
> Or, why not try to press Enter inside an Excel spreadsheet, you see a 
> different behavior.
I opened up Excel, created a new spreadsheet, went to preferences, 
unchecked
and checked some random options, tabbed into a box where I could hit 
text and hit return. The action taken was equivalent to me hitting the 
"Ok" button. It didn't move me to
another field.

I don't think it is the place of Web Forms to require a certain 
behaviour that
may be inconsistent with the keyboard conventions for a platform.