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HTML Form Validation is underused

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Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#121

Post by Dwedit »

francislavoie wrote: post #115
nikeee wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I avoid the use of `type=number` and use `type=text inputmode=numeric` instead. It doesn't come with these arrow buttons which most users don't need anyway for entering numbers. Also the keyboard is better on iOS.

But what's crazy is both of those still don't disallow non-numeric input unless you use JS to reject keystrokes and intercept paste. HTML form validation is so incomplete and limited, every time I look at it I want to scream cause wtf there's so many just totally obvious things we need that don't exist by default and we need to reinvent the wheel. Native date and time inputs are still garbage so every UI framework ha…

I used to write those fancy textboxes that reformatted your input as a phone number as you type, and intercept paste, and all that.

But then it turns out that you really do want a free-form text input. Let people paste text in, edit their text freely, then let it validate afterwards. When it validates, then reformat it.

For example, text boxes with length limits. These are awful. It messes with your ability to paste something in, then edit it down to the correct length.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#122

Post by francislavoie »

Dwedit wrote: post #121
francislavoie wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's crazy is both of those still don't disallow non-numeric input unless you use JS to reject keystrokes and intercept paste. HTML form validation is so incomplete and limited, every time I look at it I want to scream cause wtf there's so many just totally obvious things we need that don't exist by default and we need to reinvent the wheel. Native date and time inputs are still garbage so every UI framework ha…

I used to write those fancy textboxes that reformatted your input as a phone number as you type, and intercept paste, and all that. But then it turns out that you really do want a free-form text input. Let people paste text in, edit their text freely, then let it validate afterwards. When it validates, then reformat it. For example, text boxes with length limits. These are awful. It messes with your ability to paste…

Nah. Users are too stupid to fix their own inputs in many cases. Seen inputs with zero-width spaces that are invisible which fail validation. User doesn't understand why, complains. Enforcing a character set for certain kinds of inputs is a very good thing.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#123

Post by icar »

_heimdall wrote: post #109
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s amazing how many login forms are labeled “email” and then don’t have the correct type set.

This is particularly annoying on mobile since on-screen keyboards won't adjust to an email input layout and autocorrect will screw up basically any email address as soon as a "." character triggers autocomplete to commit it's guess.

And password managers will not fill in the credentials correctly.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#124

Post by onion2k »

francislavoie wrote: post #122
Dwedit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write those fancy textboxes that reformatted your input as a phone number as you type, and intercept paste, and all that. But then it turns out that you really do want a free-form text input. Let people paste text in, edit their text freely, then let it validate afterwards. When it validates, then reformat it. For example, text boxes with length limits. These are awful. It messes with your ability to paste…

Nah. Users are too stupid to fix their own inputs in many cases. Seen inputs with zero-width spaces that are invisible which fail validation. User doesn't understand why, complains. Enforcing a character set for certain kinds of inputs is a very good thing.

In 26 years of web dev, mostly as a frontend person, I've only seen zero width spaces in three situations

- pasting from Word

- QA testers being through

- devs pranking each other

The third one is by far the most common. Word is much better these days and I've not seen that happen in a long time. I wish I saw QA test this stuff more often. The idea that it's common enough that you'd break your UX to handle it baffling to me.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#125

Post by sureIy »

cuu508 wrote: post #118
kmoser wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Most browsers support natively just fine.

On Android, the date picker widget is fiddly to use for selecting distant dates, like date of birth. Not impossible but requires many many taps.

That's an implementation issue, not a specification issue. The specification just suggests the user is shown a date picker.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#126

Post by pmontra »

francislavoie wrote: post #122
Dwedit wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to write those fancy textboxes that reformatted your input as a phone number as you type, and intercept paste, and all that. But then it turns out that you really do want a free-form text input. Let people paste text in, edit their text freely, then let it validate afterwards. When it validates, then reformat it. For example, text boxes with length limits. These are awful. It messes with your ability to paste…

Nah. Users are too stupid to fix their own inputs in many cases. Seen inputs with zero-width spaces that are invisible which fail validation. User doesn't understand why, complains. Enforcing a character set for certain kinds of inputs is a very good thing.

The problem here is that sometimes users and copy pasting from another document and that comes in arbitrary formatting, not the one enforced by the input element.

For example phone numbers can be a string of digits, or multiple strings separated by spaces or hyphens or with parts enclosed by () etc

It's a more pleasant UX to let them paste anything, then edit it inside the input, validate and submit.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#127

Post by francislavoie »

onion2k wrote: post #124
francislavoie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Users are too stupid to fix their own inputs in many cases. Seen inputs with zero-width spaces that are invisible which fail validation. User doesn't understand why, complains. Enforcing a character set for certain kinds of inputs is a very good thing.

In 26 years of web dev, mostly as a frontend person, I've only seen zero width spaces in three situations - pasting from Word - QA testers being through - devs pranking each other The third one is by far the most common. Word is much better these days and I've not seen that happen in a long time. I wish I saw QA test this stuff more often. The idea that it's common enough that you'd break your UX to handle it bafflin…

"Break your UX" is a vast exaggeration. I'm not talking about phone number fields, to be clear. I'm talking about like numeric amounts, with maybe a negative or decimal point. It's literally just [0-9\.-] but that still requires JS to limit inputs to that.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#128

Post by ozim »

Because it sucks.

It does not translate with the application but with browsers settings, it doesn’t style or fit any design. It looks differently on different browsers and it is really hard to explain to stakeholders “this is from browser I don’t have control over it”.

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#129

Post by francislavoie »

lelanthran wrote: post #113
kmoser wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? Most browsers support natively just fine.

> What do you mean? Most browsers support natively just fine. The ` ` on FF has a broken time-picker[1], has always been broken, and there are no plans to ever fix it, ever. [1] In that it will let you pick a date, but not a time - the time must be manually typed into the input!

What's hilarious is they do have UI for it in about:config "dom.forms.datetime.timepicker". It makes me so angry that it's not on by default. It works fine!

Re: HTML Form Validation is underused

#130

Post by xigoi »

pmontra wrote: post #126
francislavoie wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. Users are too stupid to fix their own inputs in many cases. Seen inputs with zero-width spaces that are invisible which fail validation. User doesn't understand why, complains. Enforcing a character set for certain kinds of inputs is a very good thing.

The problem here is that sometimes users and copy pasting from another document and that comes in arbitrary formatting, not the one enforced by the input element. For example phone numbers can be a string of digits, or multiple strings separated by spaces or hyphens or with parts enclosed by () etc It's a more pleasant UX to let them paste anything, then edit it inside the input, validate and submit.

> For example phone numbers can be a string of digits, or multiple strings separated by spaces or hyphens or with parts enclosed by () etc > > It's a more pleasant UX to let them paste anything, then edit it inside the input, validate and submit.

How is that more pleasant than a textbox which automatically removes the extra characters?

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