[whatwg] Allowing authors to obtain a vertical <input type=range>

[Mounir Lamouri]

On 26/03/13 14:55, Simon Pieters wrote:
> On Tue, 26 Mar 2013 15:07:55 +0100, Jonathan Watt <jwatt at jwatt.org> wrote:
> 
>> The result of the discussion here:
>>
>> http://www.w3.org/mid/514A17D4.3070806@jwatt.org
>>
>> is that I've changed Firefox Nightly's handling of <input type=range>
>> to allow it to render as a vertical slider if it has an
>> orient="vertical" attribute on it. There was only one reply to my
>> email to www-style, but the author suggested using an attribute which
>> I'd also concluded was the best thing to do.
>>
>> I'd like to propose that this attribute be added to the HTML5
>> specification.
> 
> I don't have strong opinions on this topic, however, if we are going to
> add an attribute, it would be less verbose to use a boolean attribute:
> 
>    <input type=range vertical>

I think that the orient attribute should be used for <progress> and
<meter> too and those elements would need a third state in addition of
'vertical' and 'horizontal' that would be 'square' (or 'round' or
'center', whatever is the best name). That would allow spinners for
<progress> [1] or round <progress>/<meter> UI like [2].

Using a vertical attribute would hardly solve those use cases whilst the
orient attribute would deal with them quite easily.

I also agree that 'auto' is a pretty undesirable behaviour. As far as I
know, this is the behaviour <input type='range'> is requested to have
and no one implemented it. Microsoft expressed their concerns about it
two years ago to www-style [3].

[1] http://i.stack.imgur.com/bdrWh.png
[2] http://www.clker.com/cliparts/L/c/G/Z/z/U/masque-alpha-camembert-md.png
[3] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-style/2011Apr/0386.html

--
Mounir