[whatwg] [Web Forms 2.0] Last minute suggestion - The <format> element.

[Jim Ley]

On Mon, 24 Jan 2005 00:51:10 +0100, Olav Junker Kjær <olav at olav.dk> wrote:
> Jim Ley wrote:
> >>Date entry should be either unambiguous (e.g. picking from a calendar)
> >>or consistently in the same format across sites. Otherwise users will
> >>buy plane tickets for the wrong dates and will be unhappy.
> >
> > The current state of the web does not involve unambigous dates, yet
> > the problem you describe is not widespread.
> 
> I just took a quick survey of different airline sites, and all of them
> use dropdowns and calendars to ensure unambiguous date entry.

Which I think illustrates my point...  Switching these sites to Web
Forms 2.0 datetime as is currently defined won't happen because the
fallback behaviour is no good.  the format proposal begins to make
this more likely as you're guaranteed formatting hints, but even then
I think it will be a struggle.

I know my proposal that did allow rich fallback to the current state
was rejected which is fair enough, but I think something is needed to
improve the fallback from the current state!

Jim.