Re: Form text field default & validation

On Mon, 31 Mar 2003, David Poehlman wrote:

> I wouldn't jump on that too fast but than I don't know about all user
> agents.  I suspect though that there are still situations where it might be
> applicable.

I haven't seen people mention any currently used user agents that require
nonempty default values for fields.

And we _know_ that "placeholder" values cause confusion, since they can be
confused with real default values, which are something that the user may
actually select. Besides, it may take extra effort to remove the dummy
text, disturbing user concentration.

Actually, even if there were user agents that require nonempty defaults,
it would be better not use them, since on the balance, such defaults cause
more trouble than they can possibly help. People who use so dated browsers
that they cannot handle empty fields really need to switch to better
browsers, since empty fields abound on Web pages.

-- 
Jukka "Yucca" Korpela, http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

Received on Monday, 31 March 2003 15:28:44 UTC