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There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

blog.keenforms.com

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Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#51

Post by [deleted] »

marcosdumay wrote: post #50
pvg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hum... The point of the entire form-builder is to bring more flexibility by using a more powerful "No Code Rules Engine". Given the logical absurd built on the name of the thing, I really don't think this is a goal that will bring good results. It will not generalize at all. (What is also evidenced by the fact that there are more than 200 of those around, and none solves the very common problem the author has.) And y…

[deleted]

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#52

Post by peterangular »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #38
radiojasper wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a web designer with a speciality in a11y, it hurts that you deemed this not important enough to find the true cause of your issue with the number input. I hope you can revisit this in a future update!

> As a web designer with a speciality in a11y This is hard to believe - as I remark above, the accessibility issues with the number input type are extreme. It's much, much worse than any alternative, including a plain text input type. ` ` is something that might be recommended blindly on the basis of a checklist, but not something that might be recommended by anyone familiar with relevant concepts.

> > As a web designer with a speciality in a11y

> This is hard to believe

Oof. Even if they're outright wrong they could still have lots of experience with accessibility. On HN we typically assume good faith even when we disagree with each other.

That being said, I agree with them. The arguments made against the "numeric" field here are out of date, and not something I have ever ran into with my own testing. I'm not claiming there are no quirks, or issues... but I find it so weird that everyone is throwing modern accessibility under the bus here for what seems to be edge cases... from 2020.

> `` is something that might be recommended blindly on the basis of a checklist, but not something that might be recommended by anyone familiar with relevant concepts.

Can you please provide sources why it is not recommended to use numeric input types? I've read the .gov.uk article and it's from 2020 and many of the issues are resolved in the years since it came out.

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#53

Post by pvg »

marcosdumay wrote: post #50
pvg wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Hum... The point of the entire form-builder is to bring more flexibility by using a more powerful "No Code Rules Engine". Given the logical absurd built on the name of the thing, I really don't think this is a goal that will bring good results. It will not generalize at all. (What is also evidenced by the fact that there are more than 200 of those around, and none solves the very common problem the author has.) And y…

That's a reasonably formed comment, 'lol ur name' is not, which I'm sure you know.

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#54

Post by kylereeve »

recuter wrote: post #28
swyx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the fact that I came here to comment this shows that I am part of a hive mind and am incapable of independent thought

You are all individuals!

I'm not! [0]

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsViQD-3roE

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#56

Post by marcosdumay »

pvg wrote: post #53
marcosdumay wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hum... The point of the entire form-builder is to bring more flexibility by using a more powerful "No Code Rules Engine". Given the logical absurd built on the name of the thing, I really don't think this is a goal that will bring good results. It will not generalize at all. (What is also evidenced by the fact that there are more than 200 of those around, and none solves the very common problem the author has.) And y…

That's a reasonably formed comment, 'lol ur name' is not, which I'm sure you know.

Honestly, the name alone is obviously and enough of a problem.

It wouldn't be if this was just a badly named thing, but it's an honest name. You can always sell "seven red lines, all perpendicular, some in green ink and some in transparent" to somebody, but if you honestly go out trying to create it, you will fail. And just the requirements are enough to know that.

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#57

Post by padseeker »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #35
radiojasper wrote: post #12

I tried out the demo and was dissapointed that for number inputs a regular ` ` is used. This removes any option to add numbers by using the arrow up keys on a keyboard. Another thing I noticed is that your blog loads very slow, but that might be because this article is rather popular now.

> I tried out the demo and was dissapointed that for number inputs a regular ` ` is used. This removes any option to add numbers by using the arrow up keys on a keyboard. Do not ever use the number input type, for any purpose. If you have a number element on your form, people will accidentally mangle their own inputs, because the value in such an element silently changes when you use the mouse wheel.

OMG you're my hero. The number input is quantifiably AWFUL

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#58

Post by padseeker »

peterangular wrote: post #48
dingleberry420 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-des...

Linking that article from 2020 is problematic - please read my response here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32141468

So I started writing code for this back in 2017, and I discovered a lot of issues with the number input back in 2019 so I never revisited it. So I'm glad certain issues have been resolved, but there are still others.

I could probably write an article just about why the number input is terrible.

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#59

Post by [deleted] »

peterangular wrote: post #52
thaumasiotes wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a web designer with a speciality in a11y This is hard to believe - as I remark above, the accessibility issues with the number input type are extreme. It's much, much worse than any alternative, including a plain text input type. ` ` is something that might be recommended blindly on the basis of a checklist, but not something that might be recommended by anyone familiar with relevant concepts.

> > As a web designer with a speciality in a11y > This is hard to believe Oof. Even if they're outright wrong they could still have lots of experience with accessibility. On HN we typically assume good faith even when we disagree with each other. That being said, I agree with them. The arguments made against the "numeric" field here are out of date, and not something I have ever ran into with my own testing. I'm not…

[deleted]

Re: There's 200 form builders, but none do what a programmer can, so I built my own

#60

Post by operator-name »

padseeker wrote: post #14
radiojasper wrote: post #12

I tried out the demo and was dissapointed that for number inputs a regular ` ` is used. This removes any option to add numbers by using the arrow up keys on a keyboard. Another thing I noticed is that your blog loads very slow, but that might be because this article is rather popular now.

so there is a good reason for this - I've learned the hard way that you cannot trust the number input, it has some very strange behavior. I could write a blog post just about that issue. I plan to create my own custom number input that has its own increment/decrement buttons. The thing was built with react and the number input has some unanticipated side effects.

The UK Government design team have a blog post on this: https://technology.blog.gov.uk/2020/02/24/why-the-gov-uk-des...

> Avoid using inputs with a type of number > Do not use unless your user research shows that there’s a need for it. With there’s a risk of users accidentally incrementing a number when they’re trying to do something else - for example, scroll up or down the page. And if the user tries to enter something that’s not a number, there’s no explicit feedback about what they’re doing wrong.

(https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/text-input/#...)

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