- From: Jukka Korpela <jkorpela@cc.hut.fi>
- Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 15:37:00 +0300 (EET DST)
- To: www-html@w3.org
On Wed, 21 Oct 1998, Gregory Martin Pfeil wrote: > > It seems that there is an obvious missing functionality > > with the select tag, the ability for the user to type in > > their own entry. So instead of a pure select, you have > > a combination of select and input, where the user can > > choose a value, or type in their own. > > After reading the HTML 4 spec, I don't think > > this is currently possible. > > Nor should it be possible. This sounds eerily like the "combo box", a > widget with a lot of fundamental flaws. To me, it sounds like a special case of an extension of the form concept into the direction of dynamics. By "dynamics" I mean simply that user's input in a field affects the presence (visibility) of other fields. I don't regard this as widgetry. The problem with it is that it implies a fundamentally more complex form model and conditionality. This comes close to scripting languages, of course, but I'd say it still fits into the idea of a hypertext markup language. "Extended forms" could probably be defined in a manner which allows them to be written so that they degrade gracefully - i.e., on browsers not supporting the extensions, the form would act as a normal old-fashioned form with _all_ its fields visible > If you want to include this > type of functionality, have an option on the select named "other" and > a separate text box to hold the user's entry. It's easy enough to > have a CGI parse that. Yes, that's the way things can be handled at present. It would be more comfortable, and ultimately more _logical_, to be able to specify a FORM element where the presence of fields depends on user's input for other fields. -- Yucca, http://www.hut.fi/u/jkorpela/ or http://yucca.hut.fi/yucca.html
Received on Friday, 23 October 1998 08:37:10 UTC