Re: HTML5 datalist 'suggest box' behavior - not specified in spec?

On 2010-04-13 10:23, Ehrann Mehdan wrote:
> I saw that the current Opera implementation of the datalist tag and
> list attribute is simply not good enough The issue is, that unlike
> real world suggest boxes, when typing text, the relevant option isn't
> selected (not working as a real suggest box, but rather a text field
> and a list box on top of each other)

Opera's implementation of datalist is wrong.  Despit it being 
implemented to look like a suggest list, though without any of the 
necessary suggest list behaviour, this was not how datalist was 
originally intended.

It was meant to be a combo box, where the user can either type in their
own value or select a predefined value and it is supposed to look and
behave similarly to a <select>, except that it also allows custom
values.

See these UI design concepts for Google Chrome to see how datalist 
should be done.
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dch3zh37_0cf8kc8c4

> E.g.
>
> options are: One, Two, Three user types the letter 'T' - option 'Two'
> should be selected, user adds 'h' - 'Three' should be selected It
> should behave much like the google suggest feature that became a
> standard in most web 2.0 sites

There have been other proposals for introducing a suggest list type
feature, but nothing accepted yet.

-- 
Lachlan Hunt - Opera Software
http://lachy.id.au/
http://www.opera.com/

Received on Wednesday, 14 April 2010 09:20:27 UTC