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The biggest, easiest to implement underutilization is: "Using specific type attribute values, such as "email", "number", or "url"" These can significantly improve user experience on mobile by triggering the optimal keyboard.
One of the things I dislike about HTML form validation is it starts running from page load. So if e.g. you tie error state formatting to it, the form loads up with a bunch of errors which may be intimidating to the user.
I've never understood why this was chosen as the default experience. Most users don't enjoy having every form element yelling at them for actions they haven't even had a chance to take! You can script around this, but at that point the feature isn't doing much. I'd argue this is the biggest reason you don't see more widespread adoption.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I couldn't disagree more; it might be good for disability but for localization, unusual devices, different input methods, weird screen sizes I have never seen that well executed by browsers. I almost always prefer a more full-featured alternative from a standard framework than whatever is lowest-common-denominator feature in a browser -- which also, depending on the browser, may or may not work the same or may or may…
Browser functionality is typically (handwaving on exact numbers here) better than the worst 80% of sites, on par with the next 10%, and not as good as the top 10%. If you're putting in the effort to build a site in the top 10%, sure, you might not want to be "held back" by the browser. But the vast majority of sites would do better by using what's built into the browser. And I would argue that the value the user rece…
What percentage of websites are rolling their own functionality instead of using any one of the various library and framework that do this better?
There is no way that every single browser is going to implement some high-level feature in a satisfactory and future-proof. It's the wrong place to do it. Almost every attempt has been at least a partial failure. We might get something maybe a decade after it's in common use and then only the most basic version of that. And we get browser bloat for our troubles too.
I don't use the standard controls in apps anymore because the build-in version is too simplistic. Don't even get me started on file uploads. Is everyone just supposed to be held-back by the minimum a browser can do everywhere? Why waste browser developers time building things that no one really wants to use.
One of the things I dislike about HTML form validation is it starts running from page load. So if e.g. you tie error state formatting to it, the form loads up with a bunch of errors which may be intimidating to the user.
This is one of the main reasons people started using JavaScript, to show errors only after a form has been “touched” or right before it is submitted.
I even remember when people started evangelizing client-side validation in the mid-2000s. Javascript was already a normal tool used in web apps by then, and most web developers would regularly be adding javascript to their apps.
Back then it was a bit of a pita as you had all sorts of gotchas with javascript memory leaks by registering change events on controls. I can't even remember the term now, but you could basically have a circular reference between a closure and a control and so it wouldn't cleanup properly.
Also, modern developers probably can't even begin to imagine how slow javascript was on IE6. A loop of a few 100 iterations could bring it to an unresponsive halt.
The real problem with client-side validation is you can't trust it. You need to revalidate on the server, no matter what.
It's not a security feature, it's a UX feature.
One of the things I dislike about HTML form validation is it starts running from page load. So if e.g. you tie error state formatting to it, the form loads up with a bunch of errors which may be intimidating to the user.
This is one of the main reasons people started using JavaScript, to show errors only after a form has been “touched” or right before it is submitted.
I do get the point of using form validation clientside to ensure a better ui. But dont remenber to also verify serverside. Anything clientside can have been fumbeled with. (Also kinda anoying to have to duplicate this tho)
> (Also kinda anoying to have to duplicate this tho)
[1] https://stackoverflow.com/questions/5328883/how-do-i-style-t...
Annoyingly, Chrome used to allow styling of validation-messages using vendor-prefixed pseudoelement selectors, but they removed that functionality and never brought it back; I'll chuck this on the same pile as other arbitrary annoyances like "can we have a native HTML combo-box please" and "why is still a horribly unusable ctrl+click box instead of a checkbox-list?".