[whatwg] required attribute for checkbox/select

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Sun Mar 20 17:58:14 PST 2005


On Mon, 21 Feb 2005, Matt Wright wrote:
> 
> 1) For checkboxes, wouldn't it would make more sense from a web 
> applications standpoint if this applied to a checkbox group like radio 
> buttons currently does?
> 
> 	OLD: "For checkboxes, the required attribute shall only be satisfied
> when the checkbox is checked."
> 
> 	NEW: "For checkboxes, the required attribute shall only be satisfied
> when one or more of the checkboxes in that checkbox group is checked."
> 
> If authors want the behavior currently specified in the draft, they simply
> name that checkbox something different from all other fields in the form.

Fair enough. Changed.


> 2) Why can't the required attribute apply to a select field?  It is common
> for application designers to want to force the user to manually select an
> option.  They will do something like <option value="">Please select a valid
> option</option>. You could easily word the document to say that:

That's, IMHO, semantic abuse. That isn't an option, and shouldn't be 
called an option.

I guess it would make sense to introduce "required" for <select> in a 
future version of Web Forms when WF has a way to provide a default text 
for <select> boxes (instead of <option> as above).


> Or, you may not even need to re-word the document, but just remove 
> select from the list of unsupported controls, since the final catch-all 
> of this section explains "Any non-empty value satisfies the required 
> condition, including a simple whitespace character."

What would that mean for <select multiple>?

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



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