[whatwg] Why children of datalist elements are barred from constraint validation?

Jonas Sicking jonas at sicking.cc
Mon Aug 1 15:35:41 PDT 2011


On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 11:45 AM, Jeremy Keith <jeremy at adactio.com> wrote:
> The way that datalist is currently designed (and implemented) is exemplary. The fact that (by design) it allows authors to nest a select element within it that shares the same option elements means that authors can safely begin to use this new feature.
>
> I've written more about it here: http://adactio.com/journal/4272/
>
> I'm trying (and failing) to understand why Jonas wants this feature removed.

The reason is that I just don't think that sites will want to use it
due to not being able to get the rendering or functionality that they
want.

I must admit that you were able to construct a somewhat decent UI
using the current fallback mechanism, however I suspect that most
sites will want to use a jQuery constructed UI which displays much
nicer. In fact, I'd imagine that we'll see script libraries that
implement the <datalist> UI without any browser support for browsers
which don't have <datalist> support.

I'll also note that even your demo doesn't require that the browser
doesn't submit the <select>.

So carrying around this behavior for all eternity, when it's going to
be outdated in a few years once enough browsers support <datalist>,
doesn't seem worth the small benefit that it gains us right now.

/ Jonas


More information about the whatwg mailing list