[whatwg] Authoring feedback on <datalist>

On Jan 21, 2010, at 4:42 PM, Aryeh Gregor wrote:

> It's also worth noting that <datalist> currently seems to be conceived
> as a combobox, while search suggestions deserve totally different UI.
> Opera's UI is suitable to search suggestions, but WebKit's proposed UI
> is inappropriate for them:
> 
> http://docs.google.com/View?id=dch3zh37_0cf8kc8c4
> 
> There's a little drop-down arrow you have to click to get the list,
> which is unexpected for search suggestions.  If a separate "suggest"
> IDL attribute were added, UAs could provide different UI for that and
> datalist.

I haven't reviewed that proposal closely, but I would expect <input type=text list=...> on Mac to use the standard Mac combobox control:

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Screen shot 2010-01-21 at 7.10.52 PM.png
Type: image/png
Size: 10925 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://lists.whatwg.org/pipermail/whatwg-whatwg.org/attachments/20100121/daf705a0/attachment-0001.png>
-------------- next part --------------


Likewise on Windows it should show the standard combobox instead of what is pictured there.

I would expect <input type=search list=...> to not show any extra buttons, but simply use the list much the way search suggestions work in the Safari built-in search field.

It's not clear to me that suggest=... is needed.

Regards,
Maciej

Received on Thursday, 21 January 2010 19:12:21 UTC