RE: FAQ Re: Mixing Tables and Forms

At 11:58 AM 2002-01-31 , Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>Presumably they could hold a default real value.

AG:: Sure, but this misses the point.  It is not effective in doing what needs
to be done and it introduces usability problems.  People do stumble on these
things.

Take the case of a two-digit number field where the question is the expiration
month or year of your credit card.  The default could be 02 for the month and
02 for the year and neither one captures what the user needs to know, which is
"What is the question, here?"

Al

>
>Chaals
>
>On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, RUST Randal wrote:
>
>  Thanks, Charles.  Unfortunately, the input fields can only hold about 5
>  characters, which is insufficient space to hold any default text.
>
>  -----Original Message-----
>  From: Charles McCathieNevile
[<mailto:charles@w3.org%5D>mailto:charles@w3.org]
>  Sent: Thursday, January 31, 2002 10:35 AM
>  To: RUST Randal
>  Cc: WAI (E-mail)
>  Subject: RE: FAQ Re: Mixing Tables and Forms
>
>
>  Yep.
>
>  Another possiblity (it is an "until user agents" checkpoint in WCAG 1.0 is
>  to
>  include text in the input itself, for textfields:
>
>  <input type="text" value="0hours" ...
>
>  so in lynx you get
>
>    0hours_______________
>
>  as a text input line.
>
>  You probably should also use some helpful information, laid out to come
>  before the input or after it, in a reasonably regular way, and identified
>  with a label element. THis will help people who are using the system
>  visually
>  and are unlikely to see the title attribute value, and will work on systems
>  that do implement accoridng to specification.
>
>  <label for="#hoursAttended">Hours attended <input... /></label>
>
>  or in a table
>
>  <td><label for="#hoursAttended">Hours attended</td><td><input...
>
>  (perhaps the first cell in the column is a heading, scoped for the two cell
>  row...)
>
>  cheers
>
>  Chaals
>
>  On Thu, 31 Jan 2002, RUST Randal wrote:
>
>    Unfortunately, the page that is referenced by the URL given in Jim
>    Thatcher's example is no longer there, so I'm not sure how the code is
>    supposed to be written.
>
>    Is the following correct?
>
>    ----------
>    <input type="text" id="hoursAttended" name="hoursAttended" title="Input
>  the
>    number of hours the child attended this month." />
>    ----------
>
>    Thanks,
>
>    Randal
>
>
>
>
>-- 
>Charles McCathieNevile   
<http://www.w3.org/People/Charles>http://www.w3.org/People/Charles  phone: +61
409 134 136
>W3C Web Accessibility Initiative    
<http://www.w3.org/WAI>http://www.w3.org/WAI    fax: +1 617 258 5999
>Location: 21 Mitchell street FOOTSCRAY Vic 3011, Australia
>(or W3C INRIA, Route des Lucioles, BP 93, 06902 Sophia Antipolis Cedex,
France)
>

Received on Thursday, 31 January 2002 12:12:25 UTC