RE: place-holding characters in edit/text boxes

> But doesn't this defeat the reason behind placing default 
> text in edit 
> boxes? The related WCAG item says "Some legacy assistive technologies 
> require initial text in form controls"  - out of curiosity, 
> which user agents?

No, it doesn't defeat the purpouse. Keep in mind that this is a purely
technical requirement. It's not meant to give users a clue as to what
the input is for (that's what labels and titles are for). So, we do
provide initial text in the form of a single space, the legacy technologies
should be happy (as I've never managed to get a straight answer to your
question as to which user agents exactly, this has to remain in the realm
of informed guessing) as they can "see" the input (if I understand the
guideline correctly, ones without a default value are simply ignored...which is
the reason this guideline was created in the first place), and
the user is not unnecessarily burdened with having to delete the default
text (which on long forms with a large number of inputs/textareas can become
a real pain).

Patrick
________________________________
Patrick H. Lauke
Webmaster / University of Salford
http://www.salford.ac.uk

Received on Wednesday, 27 August 2003 08:32:25 UTC