Re: Error in HTML 4.01 specification of 'onchange' event

Greetings all;

Josh Purinton wrote:
"The event (onchange) would be almost worthless for
select controls if it behaved as specified."
In post:
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-html-editor/2003AprJun/0061.html
Regarding onchange specification:
http://www.w3.org/TR/html401/interact/scripts.html#adef-onchange

I completely agree with Josh. This issue with the
onchange specification is allowing intuitive features
to be excluded from web browsers such as this issue
with keyboard navigation of a select box in html:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=126379

When I build Web user interfaces, I do my best to make
the system as user friendly as possible. With that in
mind, keyboard navigation of pages is a must. However,
because of this issue with the w3c html spec, the
developers are able to hide behind this specification
saying that they will not add such a plainly intuitive
event to the browser. Not having the ability to use
the keyboard to navigate a select box or listbox is
painfully embarassing when I have to tell my customers
`No, you can blame w3c for this feature not working
properly` after I try to sell them on the importance
of standards compliance with all levels of application
development.

To the people who are w3c members and know about this
specification, could you please take a moment to
explain why this specification is lacking such plain
common sense?

Suggested change to spec: `The onchange event occurs
when a control loses the input focus and its value has
been modified since gaining focus *or* in the case of
select when the option selected has been changed as a
result of user input while control is in focus.

BTW - If this is not be best forum for such questions
or suggestions, I would greatly appreciate to know
where I can get my voice heard.

Thanks for your time and interest.

Regards

Timothy C. Quinn
Senior Application Developer

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Received on Wednesday, 3 August 2005 06:16:09 UTC