4 ms·

I just ran into "datalist" and my first impression was "wow, game changer". The behavior is the same across browsers but the appearance is strictly browser-spec

I just ran into "datalist" and my first impression was "wow, game changer". The behavior is the same across browsers but the appearance is strictly browser-specific. You can't style it with CSS. Sometimes the list displays the text of the data, sometimes, the text and the "value" attribute. So you are not selecting "Atlanta" - you are selecting "234290780 Atlanta" (the ID and the value). And with the on-click action, you can't just get the ID - you have to get the whole thing and parse the ID out. It just seems... abandoned.

iamflimflam1 3y ago
That's the problem with most of these things, half assed implementations that just tick the box of "compliant with a standard". There's a reason why we have all these frameworks built on top of HTML - it's because the browser manufacturers have not done their jobs.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  That's am incentive alignment problem, browser vendors' job is ultimately to make money not improve the specs. Anyone that's interested can get involved in the specs process though. If anything it's web developers who haven't done our job there, it feels to me good specs are more our concern and responsibility than anyone else's.
- lenkite 3y ago
  This is also why I think frameworks like Flutter that render everything to canvas are going to become more and more popular over time - as more and more WASM standards are implemented in browsers. HTML will be used only for docs and not for web-apps.
datagram 3y ago
> You can't style it with CSS. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is 100% intentional. datalists can draw outside of the browser window, which is fantastic, but also probably means that there are security considerations for letting it be styled by users. Imagine malicious ads/websites being able to draw outside the browser window.

4 ms·

I just ran into "datalist" and my first impression was "wow, game changer". The behavior is the same across browsers but the appearance is strictly browser-spec

by renegade-otter 3y ago

iamflimflam1 3y ago
That's the problem with most of these things, half assed implementations that just tick the box of "compliant with a standard". There's a reason why we have all these frameworks built on top of HTML - it's because the browser manufacturers have not done their jobs.
- flagrant_taco 3y ago
  That's am incentive alignment problem, browser vendors' job is ultimately to make money not improve the specs. Anyone that's interested can get involved in the specs process though. If anything it's web developers who haven't done our job there, it feels to me good specs are more our concern and responsibility than anyone else's.
- lenkite 3y ago
  This is also why I think frameworks like Flutter that render everything to canvas are going to become more and more popular over time - as more and more WASM standards are implemented in browsers. HTML will be used only for docs and not for web-apps.
datagram 3y ago
> You can't style it with CSS. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is 100% intentional. datalists can draw outside of the browser window, which is fantastic, but also probably means that there are security considerations for letting it be styled by users. Imagine malicious ads/websites being able to draw outside the browser window.