[whatwg] rel/rev for <form> ?

On Sun, 06 Nov 2005 04:41:58 +0200, Mike Dierken <mdierken at hotmail.com>  
wrote:

<...>
> I actually would find it interesting and useful for a the inputs of a  
> form
> to have a 'class' attribute that indicates the meaning of the parameter -
> and let a web crawler find all the forms that use a certain class of  
> input
> parameters.
>
> For example:
>  <form action="citizens.cgi" method='GET'>
>   <input name='the-ssn' class='gov.us/identity/individual-tax-id'
> type='text' />
>  </form>
>
>  <form action="houses-for-sale.cgi" method='GET'>
>   <input name='zip' class='gov.us/postal/zip-code' type='text' />
>  </form>
>
> It would be cool to have a service that discovered these forms and then
> provided a search of all the URIs that accepted social-security-number,  
> or
> zip-code.

I must say you came with a really interesting idea. Yes, that would be  
good. I suppose you don't want the CLASS attribute for the INPUTs to serve  
the purpose you've emphased. The REL attribute wouldn't be good in this  
case. So, definitely a new one is needed.

My suggestion would be to use the attribute named TAGS (yes, I know it is  
inspired by del.icio.us and co., but ideas are always welcome).

<input name='zip' tags='gov.us postal zip-code' type='text' />

Separated by spaces, working much in the same way as REL. The order of the  
tags does not matter and these could provide clues to web crawlers and  
even browsers on the expected input. Microformats, in the same way as with  
REL, could define various <input> tags serving various purposes. Based on  
this, for example, a web browser could automatically provide a list of  
known ZIP codes in the US.

This would be awesome, and would provide backwards compatibility, because  
everything else is still the same. Only newer browsers could greatly  
enhance (when users fill forms) the user experience.

Yet, this is very different from the initial proposal Charles made.

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Received on Sunday, 6 November 2005 03:21:17 UTC