Server side vs client side

Dear Group

i am trying to play catch up, with little or no knowledge of HTML 5, and
unsure of what is happening in server side scripting.

However, i have some observations, of how things seem to have changed over
the past decade, or decade an a half:

There seems to have been a huge shift form server side form verification,
to client side "mechanisms", which may or may not include server calls. The
most obvious example of such would be an Ajax calendar widget capable of
letting one choose a real date from four decade limits, let us say. When it
comes accessibility such a widget is a real non-starter. Arguably, three
select boxes, one for month, one for date, and one for year, would be far
preferable, with server side verification to reject February 30th.
Autocomplete mechanisms also seem counterintuitive: it is expected that
when i search on a search engine, that i am searching for the same things
that others are, yet it would seem that the majority of the time when i am
asked to select a country (and a finite list of options exists) i do not
seem to encounter autocomplete, at a time when it would be at its most
useful. As i said, i am largely ignorant of HTML 5. It appears to me that a
very small number of <form> elements found in HTML 4, when used
intelligently, are capable of driving any required interface, but all one
seems to see these days is graphical submit buttons, widgets, Ajax objects,
etc. Perhaps i am a fossil, although i would only wish to offer the humble
opinion that things seem a little overdeveloped ...

Yours faithfully,
Lewis.

*— Mr Robinson —*
BA (hons) Oxon.

271 Liverpool Road
London N1 1LX