- From: Christian Schmidt <whatwg.org@chsc.dk>
- Date: Fri, 27 Aug 2004 15:08:52 +0200
Ian Hickson wrote: > The problem is that even if the list is updated, the UAs aren't. If this > had been done from the start, people using IE2 would have ancient country > lists, and there would be little that page authors could do about it. People using legacy UAs would have to either enter their country code directly in a text field or select their country from a list of provided by the page author or the author of the Webforms-for-legacy-UA's-library he is using. So adding a country selector to the Webforms specification would be status quo for users of legacy UAs. On the other hand, if a user lives in a new country, he could either upgrade his UA or update the country list (if it is editable), or he could wait for each and every site owner in the world to update their list. If it is a small country, this could take a long time. For these users, upgrading their UA or editing the country list would probably be easier. One could imagine, that the country list could be updated by e.g. Windows Update (this would be a very small download) without upgrading the entire browser. Also, new countries don't just appear from day to day, so the users will have some time to upgrade. > Also, note that vendors typically want to stay WELL away from specifying > stuff like this. Microsoft got in serious trouble when they drew a map for > the timezone selector -- based on UN data! -- of countries near India, and > got disputed regions... "wrong". Somebody still has to make a decision, unless the server accepts any two-letter code without checking whether this is actually a real country. I suggest that the UA could contain a default list of countries based on UN data or whatever. It should be possible for the user to add entries to this list by entering a country name and a two-letter code. The server should accept any two-letter code, unless it knows for sure that it isn't a valid code (according to the page author's point of view). Most users would probably only ever select one or two different countries from this list (typically the country they currently live in). If these countries do not appear in the list provided by the UA vendor, the user would only have to enter them once. This would only apply to few users, namely those who live in places that have disputes about the country code. Christian
Received on Friday, 27 August 2004 06:08:52 UTC