[whatwg] HTMLForms: Implicit Submission with {display:none} button

[Glenn Maynard]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:

>  The current Trident/WebKit behavior has a nice side-effect to (without
> scripts) require a visible submit button to enable implicit form submission.
>

I don't find that nice.  As a user, it's very annoying when implicit form
submission doesn't work for some obscure reason (like not having a submit
control), forcing me to use the mouse instead of it behaving like any other
form.  It makes the UI inconsistent and unpredictable.

Also, the single-text-input-with-no-submit-button case doesn't follow the
above.

The "without scripts" is also a fatal caveat.  Users can't be expected to
understand things like "you can press enter to submit the form if you see a
browser-native submit button, but not if the button is actually scripted
markup".

In principle, *all* forms should allow implicit submit, unless the site
explicitly doesn't want it (scripted autosave dialogs) or the UA doesn't
support it.  That ship sailed years ago, but the visibility of the submit
button shouldn't enter into it.

-- 
Glenn Maynard