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I'm not sure whether you care, but that page you linked to about form validation contains JS for some of the more advanced features someone might want to implem

I'm not sure whether you care, but that page you linked to about form validation contains JS for some of the more advanced features someone might want to implement. Even then I'd say that it's wrong to think of input as "invalid" before I've started editing the field (unless of course I tried to submit it already), which is what this standard apparently does. I'm already annoyed with forms that mark a field as invalid because it's required the moment I focus on it, that would be much more annoying if several fields further down were also marked as invalid. Your reaction will probably be that I'm missing the point, that if we went with a JS-less world there would be solutions for this. But I strongly suspect that the solution would be to not use HTML and instead use some other technology that was capable of general computation on the client.

clarry 6y ago
I mean my premise is that we could have (and imho should have) categorically rejected "general computation on the client." In that scenario, the solution could look something like HTML5 form validation. Nitpicking the details of how it is currently implemented is indeed beside the point. Ideally, the spec is made loose enough to give user agents & users the freedom to configure the behavior to their liking (and if someone can make the case for a particular behavior must be followed in some situations, then an optional attribute is added to "force" that behavior). In general, I'm very tired of the status quo, which is that every site developer is responsible for providing good UX and people nag at them, when their preferences could be accommodated for by the browser itself. As long as the behavior stems from javascript, there's very little a browser can do to accommodate user preferences without breaking the web at large. You know, maybe I don't like form validation the way you'd implement it in JS. People are so vested in the status quo that some of them even get angry when you e.g. suggest that they could use the browser's reader mode (instead of nagging at the site's author) to make a site readable for themselves. Bikeshedding about colours and fonts on front page HN postings happens all the time... of course, reader mode is a hack that fails very often, so disagreeing with that suggestion is somewhat justified. But really, we could've built the web around the user agent instead of vice versa, and then your web browser would be your reader mode by default. You could blame at your browser vendor or yourself first of all if the colors and fonts (or input form validator behavior before you've entered anything) don't please you.

clarry 6y ago

I mean my premise is that we could have (and imho should have) categorically rejected "general computation on the client." In that scenario, the solution could look something like HTML5 form validation. Nitpicking the details of how it is currently implemented is indeed beside the point. Ideally, the spec is made loose enough to give user agents & users the freedom to configure the behavior to their liking (and if someone can make the case for a particular behavior must be followed in some situations, then an optional attribute is added to "force" that behavior). In general, I'm very tired of the status quo, which is that every site developer is responsible for providing good UX and people nag at them, when their preferences could be accommodated for by the browser itself. As long as the behavior stems from javascript, there's very little a browser can do to accommodate user preferences without breaking the web at large. You know, maybe I don't like form validation the way you'd implement it in JS. People are so vested in the status quo that some of them even get angry when you e.g. suggest that they could use the browser's reader mode (instead of nagging at the site's author) to make a site readable for themselves. Bikeshedding about colours and fonts on front page HN postings happens all the time... of course, reader mode is a hack that fails very often, so disagreeing with that suggestion is somewhat justified. But really, we could've built the web around the user agent instead of vice versa, and then your web browser would be your reader mode by default. You could blame at your browser vendor or yourself first of all if the colors and fonts (or input form validator behavior before you've entered anything) don't please you.