[whatwg] select element should have a required attribute

[Jonas Sicking]

On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 5:26 PM, Ashley Sheridan
<ash at ashleysheridan.co.uk> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2010-08-09 at 16:54 -0700, Jonas Sicking wrote:
>
> On Mon, Aug 9, 2010 at 4:35 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Fri, 18 Jun 2010, Mounir Lamouri wrote:
> >>
> >> I'm wondering why select element do not have a required attribute.
> >
> > It's impossible to submit a <select> element (without a size="" attribute
> > or multiple="" attribute) without it having a value -- essentially,
> > required="" is already implied.
> >
> >
> > On Thu, 22 Jul 2010, Mounir Lamouri wrote:
> >>
> >> 1. A typical use case of <select> is to have <option value=''>Choose an
> >> option</option> as a default value. Having @required would prevent
> >> authors to write any js check when they are using <select> like that.
> >
> > That seems like an invalid use of <option> to me. It would be better as:
> >
> >   <label> Choose an option: <select> ... </select> </label>
>
> Many times you want the user to make an explicit choice, rather than
> just leaving whatever was already selected. What many websites do is:
>
> <label>Choose an option:
>   <select>
>     <option></option>
>     <option>value 1</option>
>     <option>value 2</option>
>     <option>value 3</option>
>   </select>
> </label>
>
> Or
>
> <select>
>   <option value="">Choose an option:</option>
>   <option>value 1</option>
>   <option>value 2</option>
>   <option>value 3</option>
> </select>
>
> It would be good if it was possible to use @required together with
> these usage patterns. I don't believe that any other feature of HTML
> supplies the same, or similar, functionality? While authors could do
>
> <label>Choose an option:
>   <select>
>     <option>value 1</option>
>     <option>value 2</option>
>     <option>value 3</option>
>   </select>
> </label>
>
> I think there is a reason they haven't done so so far, and I don't see
> that HTML5 changes any of those reasons.
>
> While I guess we could wait for v2 for this feature, it seems like a
> glaring omission and inconsistency in the way that @required works.
>
> / Jonas
>
> This is wrong in my opinion, it just doesn't make sense to have loads of empty elements. Select lists get used for a lot of wrong things sometimes, such as a year picker (of which there are many tales on the daily wtf where the data range just isn't well thought out)

I don't really understand what you are proposing. Many sites seem to
want to have users make an explicit choice. What do you propose that
they do?

/ Jonas