[whatwg] introduction, plus some form input ideas

[Ric Hardacre]

hello, i'm an asp developer in the uk and have a couple of 
suggestions... no doubt selfishly to make my life easier one day :-) 
these could probably do with their own threads if they're deemed worthy 
of discussion but let's just throw them out there:

1. form tag:
    send="all" , (default, send all fields to server in get/post)
    send="changed" , only send hidden fields and fields that have been 
changed by the user

the idea being that if i'm running a datagrid then there's no point 
sending a ton of data back and forth if the user only edits a couple of 
cells. but the hidden form data will still be needed in any case so i 
can still connect the data sent to the user who sent it!

2. select tag:
    selectedindex="[num]"

implicitly set the selected index, instead of having to parse all the 
option tags and insert a "selected" string, much easier to bind to 
server side data, an invalid value (such as -1 or greater than the 
number of option tags) would mean none are selected. this would 
obviously not apply to multiple-selects

3. input tags:
    validate="[regex]"

implicitly set a regular expression to which the inputted data must 
conform, so a value of regex="([0-9]*)\.[0-9][0-9]" would (assuming my 
top-of-the-head regexp isn't totally fubar) only allow the user to enter 
a number in currency format (any number of digits, a full stop and two 
digits). though how to enforce it is another question, leave it up to 
the agent? simply not respond if any other key was pressed? would it 
need a hint to fill out default formatting too, appending the .00 if it 
is left off, etc.

just a few, i'm eager to get web 2.0 forms into a much more usefull 
state than at present, and to not have to rely so much on javascript and 
css hacking to get things done!

ric hardacre