- From: Boris Zbarsky <bzbarsky@MIT.EDU>
- Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 15:59:31 -0400
- To: "Tab Atkins Jr." <jackalmage@gmail.com>
- CC: www-style list <www-style@w3.org>
Boris Zbarsky wrote: >> Indeed, it would prevent that. I don't think that the browser has >> enough information to actually present that sort of error display, >> though. If you have the error messages physically disconnected from >> the input, you need a way to unambiguously connect the message to the >> input. > > Sure; clicking on the error message flashes the input. Much like the > Inspect feature in Firebug, say. To be clear... If you have ~5 inputs and they all fit on the screen at once, then showing the error messages next to the inputs is fine; the user clicks submit, sees the errors, changes the data, etc. If you have 300 inputs (lots of forms like that out there, in fact), or 2000 (I've seen multiple bug reports on forms like _that_ as well), and they do validation, then having to scroll around looking for that one input where the error happened is a terrible user experience. For this setup, centralizing the error list in one place and focusing inputs (scrolling to them and highlighting them) when one of the errors is clicked is the only sane way to go. I would like browsers to be able to use whichever of the above two error-reporting modes they want, or even a combination depending on the number of inputs in the form... Your proposal restricts the possible user interfaces such as to prevent the second mode. -Boris
Received on Tuesday, 25 August 2009 20:00:17 UTC