RE: place-holding characters in edit/text boxes

I was just talking about this last night with the guy from
www.diveintoaccessibility.org . He confessed he cheats on this - putting a
space in the search box. By cheating his site validates at bobby AAA and
mine, by not cheating validates at bobby AA.

Sounds a bit silly that. I didn't put a string in there because I thought it
would be more likely to get in the way.  If this really isnt needed any more
perhaps bobby (and the associated WAI rule it cites) needs an update?

Carl

-----Original Message-----
From: David Poehlman [mailto:poehlman1@comcast.net] 
Sent: 02 September 2003 15:25
To: wai-ig list
Subject: Re: place-holding characters in edit/text boxes



I can at least attest that a space would probably not help.  In fact, what
worked was explicit text that said, "Type your information here.", or
something to that effect.  I believe old lynx had a similar issue but that
was around 1998 too.  There may be simple at in use today that have this
issue still and there may also be cognative issues as well but I am not
certain.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Charles McCathieNevile" <charles@sidar.org>
To: "Lauke PH" <P.H.Lauke@salford.ac.uk>
Cc: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2003 10:09 AM
Subject: Re: place-holding characters in edit/text boxes



The best response I have got is "old screen readers and Netscape" - from the
times so long ago (6 years) when forms were new, non-standard, and the
little boxes were not clear to systems that tried to explain the text on the
screen.

In which case a space would probably not be the thing that triggered a
useful response.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of this already vague information, nor am I
equipped to test it, but maybe somebody can do better having this much
extra... Reading the archives of the WCAG group through 1998 might also be
enlightening.

cheers

Chaals

On Thursday, Aug 28, 2003, at 00:20 Australia/Sydney, Lauke PH wrote:

> Is there any information as to examples of ua/at that exhibit this 
> flawed behaviour ? Any known cases of problem combinations ? I've 
> asked a few times
> before, but the list always seems to go quiet after that...
>
--
Charles McCathieNevile                          Fundación Sidar
charles@sidar.org                                http://www.sidar.org

Received on Tuesday, 2 September 2003 13:25:40 UTC