[whatwg] input element list attribute and filtering suggestions

Ian Hickson ian at hixie.ch
Fri Jan 20 15:41:15 PST 2012


On Fri, 29 Jul 2011, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 8:32 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > On Fri, 29 Jul 2011, Jonas Sicking wrote:
> >>
> >> I have no idea how the UA would be smart enough to figure out if 
> >> filtering makes sense or not based on the set of suggestions.
> >
> > You could do something like:
> >
> >  - if there are 7 or fewer suggestions, show them all.
> >  - if filtering reduces the list to 1 to 7 suggestions, show those.
> >  - if there's some way to prioritise the filtered list, show the 7 best
> >   results from the filtered list.
> >  - otherwise, show everything.
> 
> I assume it's a bug in the above suggestion that if filtering results in 
> more than 7 results, we'd show everything, rather than just the filtered 
> result?

Actually no, the idea was to show 7 or fewer if there was some way to 
ensure that we were only showing the 7 best ones, and to otherwise act 
like a regular combo box, which gives access to everything.

But that may not be the best solution; it's just an option. My point is 
just that it's a UI issue.


> If so, this basically comes down to "filter if it's more than 7, 
> otherwise don't filter". These sort of magic limits is exactly the type 
> of things that authors are going to end up butting up against and are 
> going to want to configure.

*shrug*. I think we should wait for this to be a real problem before 
fixing it. We have too many real problems already to be focusing on likely 
problems.


On Mon, 1 Aug 2011, Aryeh Gregor wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 29, 2011 at 7:24 PM, Ian Hickson <ian at hixie.ch> wrote:
> > My overarching point, however, is that this is a UI issue, and not an 
> > authoring issue.
> 
> The overarching counterpoint is that in-page UI *is* an authoring issue, 
> because authors want to control exactly how their page looks and 
> behaves.  Browser/chrome UI issues shouldn't be standardized, but page 
> UI issues absolutely should (at least in many cases).

I disagree with this, at least in terms of a general guiding principle.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'


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