[whatwg] input type="url" allow URLs without http:// prefix

[Ian Hickson]

On Sun, 12 Jul 2009, Bruce Lawson wrote:
> 
> The eleventy squillion WordPress sites out there that allow comments ask 
> for your web page address as well as name and email. The method of 
> entering a URL does not require the http:// prefix; just beginning the 
> URL with www is accepted.
> 
> As it's very common for people to drop the http:// prefix on 
> advertising, business cards etc (and who amongst us reads out the prefix 
> when reading a URL on the phone?) I'd like to suggest that input 
> type="url" allows the http:// prefix to be optional on input and, if 
> ommitted, be assumed when parsing.

Assuming you mean user input, it already is allowed to be optional; the 
spec doesn't prevent the user agent from doing whatever they want in terms 
of fixups.

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Ian Pouncey wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 12, 2009 at 3:48 PM, Kornel Lesinski<kornel at geekhood.net> 
> wrote:
> > On Sun, 12 Jul 2009 09:46:19 +0100, Bruce Lawson <brucel at opera.com> 
> > wrote:
> >
> >> As it's very common for people to drop the http:// prefix on 
> >> advertising, business cards etc (and who amongst us reads out the 
> >> prefix when reading a URL on the phone?) I'd like to suggest that 
> >> input type="url" allows the http:// prefix to be optional on input 
> >> and, if ommitted, be assumed when parsing.
> >
> > The spec explicitly allows that actual value seen and edited by the 
> > user in the interface is different from DOM value of the input, so 
> > browsers are free to prepend http:// automatically (and IMHO should – 
> > DSK-253195).
> 
> To make this less ambiguous I would prefer that we talk about making it 
> optional to specify a protocol or scheme name (personal preference for 
> protocol) rather than http:// specifically. While http will be the most 
> common protocol by far it is not the only possibility.

The scheme is not optional in the submission format.


> I have no problems with the idea though, I just think there needs to be 
> a mechanism for highlighting the change to the user rather than this 
> being hidden in the DOM.

That's a UI issue, which is more or less out of scope of the spec.


On Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Bruce Lawson wrote:
> 
> Excellent. And, while I don't doubt you at all, I'm abashed that I 
> missed that nuance, especially as it'#s explicitly allowed?  Where would 
> I find that in the spec?

On Mon, 13 Jul 2009, Kornel wrote:
> 
> The "URL state" section says that value in DOM may be different from 
> value in the user interface:
> 
> http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/multipage/forms.html#url-state
> 
> The example difference given in the spec is URL-escaping, but in my 
> understanding, it should allow to prepending of protocol as well (I 
> admit that last bit is not stated explicitly).

Right.

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