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Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

mough.xyz

31–40 of 114 posts

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#31
post #6

Why in 2023 is this still an issue? Frameworks and browsers should be designed that if you totally ignore rtl support, the browser/framework just does some usable default. Just like if you don't set a font size, the browser chooses one for you. Or if you don't specify the background color, one is chosen for you.

> Why in 2023 is this still an issue? I mean Safari and Firefox only recently (2021) got datetime / datetime-local input support and afaik they still aren’t feature complete (html5). Date pickers have been one of the most popular / important widgets in Javascript for like the last 20 years or so. The only reason edge has it is because it’s backed by chrome (IE / MS was notorious for foot dragging in the space).

Could you confirm datetime is supported by all browsers with no usability quirks?

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#32
post #15

Uh. If I search for textarea and BiDi text, in pretty much all variations I can think of https://www.w3.org/International/talks/1602-oman is one of the top links. And right in there, the "What if you don't know the direction in advance" section, https://www.w3.org/International/talks/1602-oman/#advance I assume the problem is that the author doesn't really know the space, and so didn't even know that "BiDi" is the ri…

Instead of gatekeeping "the space" with insider abbreviations and belittling the author, you could appreciate that they raised awareness of the issue.

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#33
post #8

There is also this shortcut of ctrl+shift+x to switch to RTL. Which is really funny when you do it on Twitter since it flips the entire user interface.

I used to work on web RTS game and one of the FE guys before my time had used scaleX(-1) for virtually every RTL case. First he flipped the viewport, then flip back everything that shouldn't have been flipped.

I threw pretty much all his html, CSS and JS once I was allowed to render most of the game with WebGL

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#34
post #15

Uh. If I search for textarea and BiDi text, in pretty much all variations I can think of https://www.w3.org/International/talks/1602-oman is one of the top links. And right in there, the "What if you don't know the direction in advance" section, https://www.w3.org/International/talks/1602-oman/#advance I assume the problem is that the author doesn't really know the space, and so didn't even know that "BiDi" is the ri…

Instead of gatekeeping "the space" with insider abbreviations and belittling the author, you could appreciate that they raised awareness of the issue.

I am not "gatekeeping", I'm telling you that in spaces you don't know there's hidden complexity, and you shouldn't rely on the Internet.

No amount of "awareness" is taking that away.

Also, please tell me where I "belittled" the author.

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#35
post #6

Why in 2023 is this still an issue? Frameworks and browsers should be designed that if you totally ignore rtl support, the browser/framework just does some usable default. Just like if you don't set a font size, the browser chooses one for you. Or if you don't specify the background color, one is chosen for you.

> Why in 2023 is this still an issue? I mean Safari and Firefox only recently (2021) got datetime / datetime-local input support and afaik they still aren’t feature complete (html5). Date pickers have been one of the most popular / important widgets in Javascript for like the last 20 years or so. The only reason edge has it is because it’s backed by chrome (IE / MS was notorious for foot dragging in the space).

Date pickers will still be popular JS products because the browser native options won't match designers' requests.

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#36

Why in 2023 is this still an issue? Frameworks and browsers should be designed that if you totally ignore rtl support, the browser/framework just does some usable default. Just like if you don't set a font size, the browser chooses one for you. Or if you don't specify the background color, one is chosen for you.

Agreed. SwiftUI in iOS handles this out of the box.

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#38

This should be the operating systems problem to solve not developers of every website ever. Same with spellchecking, emojis, copy/paste etc.

This should be the operating systems problem to solve not developers of every website ever. Same with spellchecking, emojis, copy/paste etc. From from your mouth to God's ear. I wish every program would default to system-wide settings. But unfortunately, too many do their own things. Why does Microsoft Office need a separate dictionary from the rest of my computer? Why does Wrike intercept ⇧⌘N? Why doesn't Adobe Phot…

Viewing one’s “computer” as a unified whole is a strange illusion we keep chasing after. Apple tries, but it just doesn’t work like that.

The “world” is no different. We have different but often overlapping protocols for all kinds of fundamental verbs in society (payment, government services, communication).

Only a handful of critical technology has seen some standardization. Stuff like electricity, language (to some extend), cars. Everything else is a complete shit-show. I don’t get why “computers” get such a hard time. These things are getting more complex than small societies.

Re: Add dir=“auto” to your inputs and textareas

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol it's funny to summarize this discussion as: "we don't want to make a (seemingly) positive change because too many people rely on us to live in their 'backwards' ways".

Thats fine, but then you say "we're going to make a new html6, and if you put DOCTYPE html6 at the start of your page, then legacy behaviours like that will be dropped and we'll start doing the right thing by default"

And there's absolutely no problem with it. Except that it won't happen due to the standard bodies losing face after they made a lot of noise with their decision that HTML 5 was the one true standard that would never get replaced.
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