Re: checkbox labels

Hi Erik,

My original note was about boolean inputs as checkboxes, not just 
checkboxes in general.  So using my testcase in Orbeon's processor, I 
saw a regular textfield that contained the value "0".  Most of the 
browser-based XForms processors handle xf:select's with 
@appearance="full" the same way (with label's on the right of the 
checkboxes), so I didn't bother to mention that control.

I agree with the posts here that point out that XForms isn't about 
presentation, but rather abstract UI.  I personally think that the 
overall ability of the form author to determine label layout is probably 
best addressed by the XHTML group and of course if they go with a CSS 
style or attribute to solve this problem, then XForms processors should 
honor it if possible.  But since the forms part of XHTML2 is driven by 
XForms, then a recommendation by this WG would surely carry a lot of 
weight.  I was hoping that one of us had already solved this problem for 
our users so that we all had something to build on, but looking at the 
posts, I guess not :)

--Aaron

Erik Bruchez wrote:
> 
> Aaron,
> 
> It looks like you did not try Orbeon Forms: by default we put labels for 
> select/@appearance="full" and select1/@appearance="full" to the right of 
> the checkbox or radio button. Because, as has been pointed out in this 
> thread, this is what you want most of the time. Check the second tab here:
> 
>   http://www.orbeon.com/ops/xforms-controls/
> 
> Of course this is automatically reversed if you decide to use a 
> right-to-left language, but that change is then done automatically by 
> the HTML renderer.
> 
> Now to answer your question, at this point we don't allow user control 
> over positioning of the item labels, except using XSLT post-processing.
> 
> Using CSS, by the way, would be the ideal way, but in Orbeon Forms CSS 
> is interpreted by the browser, which means that if a CSS property is not 
> supported by the browser then we can't use it, obviously. So our 
> solution will probably be to add an extension attribute on XForms 
> controls for that purpose.
> 
> Note that for select/@appearance="full" and select1/@appearance="full", 
> you have two types of labels:
> 
> o one label for each item
> o a global label for the whole control
> 
> Here, like for other controls, we display the label for the whole 
> control on the left by default.
> 
> -Erik
> 
>> Hi,
>>
>> I noticed that every xforms processor that I tried put the labels for 
>> boolean inputs (usually rendered as checkboxes) to the left of the 
>> checkbox even though the overwhelming preference for html forms is to 
>> have the label on the right of a checkbox.  Do any xforms processors 
>> allow their authors to position a boolean input's label to the right 
>> of the control?  Perhaps using a CSS style?
>>
>> I guess the better question might be, does any processor allow the 
>> form author to determine the label position (either left or right of 
>> the underlying control) of any xforms control?  And if so, how?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> --Aaron
>

Received on Monday, 5 February 2007 19:54:53 UTC