[Bug 16564] The directionality of a textarea should be determined based on its parent if its value does not have any strong characters

https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=16564

--- Comment #8 from Aharon Lanin <aharon.lists.lanin@gmail.com> 2012-04-01 20:46:54 UTC ---
(In reply to comment #7)
> I'm not convinced that what you're describing is the ideal behavior from a UI
> perspective; imo the UI should be based on, if not the locale of the browser, at
> least the surrounding context of the UI element, not its content. So using
> either the directionality of the browser chrome or using the directionality of
> the input element's parent.

IMO, the way to optimize the UX of resizing a textarea is to always put the
resize control on the side of the textarea that will actually move if the
textarea's width is changed. And I admit that putting the resizer in the
textarea's end side does not always achieve it. However, neither does putting
it on the end side relative to the textarea's parent, or on the end side
relative to the browser's locale. Here are three examples that show that which
side of the textarea moves when the textarea's width is changed is not
necessarily affected by the direction (and sometimes even the alignment) of
*anything*:

data:text/html,<div style="text-align:right"><textarea></textarea> *** </div>

data:text/html,<div style="text-align:right"><div style="display:inline-block;
text-align:left"><textarea></textarea> *** </div></div>

data:text/html,<div style="float:right"><textarea></textarea> *** </div>

In any case, my bottom line is the same as fantasai's: do not set an empty
<textarea dir=auto>'s direction to be the same as the parent element. It does
not necessarily improve the UX of resizing it.

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Received on Sunday, 1 April 2012 20:47:13 UTC