[thelist] Form CSS styles

[.jeff]

andrew,

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> From: Andrew Clover
>
> > from a "give the developer as much control as
> > possible" viewpoint and not a "what's security?"
> > viewpoint right?
>
> Both really. I've grown really tired of MS's approach -
> especially in the area of IE - of blindly adding
> hundreds of features of questionable usefulness, and
> integrating everything with everything else such that
> any small bug is likely to become a security hole.
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i think your account of ie and microsoft's adding of features is quite
exaggerated -- especially the idea that some features that are added have
"questionable usefulness".  i can agree with their being a risk imposed by
integrating everything with everything else, but there's also a certain
usefulness to that as well for some users of their products.  what i'd
prefer to see is more of these features disabled by default with a prompt to
the user to enable the first time a feature has an attempted usage.

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> From my personal experience, MS Security seem far more
> interested in arguing Mitigating Factors and denying
> potential issues than good practice.
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remember that that's only the pr side of the attack on reported security
holes.  unless you work there, it's doubtful you could have the perspective
from inside, which is likely quite concerned about taking care of the
issues.

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> Which is why I find it very strange that they've taken
> control away from the developer on this small, very
> specific issue, where to all intents and purposes there
> is no security problem.
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yes, i can agree.  it's quite frustrating with the number of functional
elements (namely events) that aren't scriptable with a file input -- like
the onchange event handler.  sucks that that event doesn't exist for this
element.

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> >  - ctrl+mouse click will select more than one "option"
> >    when in multi-select mode
>
> Argh! <select multiple>! What do you want, blood! :-)
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if you're going to do it, do it right eh?  ;)

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> >  - pressing "o" key three times shows me the third
> >    "option" that starts with the letter "o".
>
> Hmm, I'm not sure I like this behaviour.
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well, fortunately, it's not about *you* liking a behavior or not.  it's
about what the average user expects from the element.  it already has a
defined behavior, it doesn't make sense to alter unless it's being used by a
controlled group of users that expect it to work differently.

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> I'd expect it to try to select an option starting with
> 'Ooo'. I know it annoys me when I go to a 'country'
> select box and try to type 'Ge...' for Germany and end
> up with some country beginning with an 'E'. Instead you
> have to press 'G' and then go down a few entries until
> you get to the right one - not brilliant for usability.
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or continue pressing "g" until you get to the right option.  it may not be
brilliant for *your* usability, but you already know my thoughts on that
(see above if you skipped ;p).

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> > http://members.evolt.org/jeff/code/select_keydown.cfm
>
> D'oh - I see you're waaaay ahead of me Jeff :-)
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yup.  had this very same thread on another list just the other day.  that
prompted me to write a script to alter the behavior of the <select>.  in
writing that script i quickly found out why the <select> has the behavior it
does.

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> BTW the Windows way of solving the "you can't remember
> what you've typed in so far" problem you mention there
> is to timeout about a second after typing, so if you
> press another key it starts a new 'word'. You can see
> this in eg. the filer. It's not perfect (and I
> personally find the timeout a little too fast) but it's
> a decent approach.
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ew, yuck.  i don't like that approach at all.  i think i'll stick with the
escape key to start from scratch or the backspace key to back up in your
search.  probably the only thing i'd add would be some sort of tooltip
that'd popup telling you what you'd typed in so far.

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> > additionally, it would be nice if it supported icons
> > for each "option".
>
> Mmm yes. That'd be smart. You could have little flag
> icons in your country menus and everything.
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or drive icons.  or folder icons.  or file type icons. or .... you get the
idea.

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> > finally, it started out as a normal <select> which was
> > replaced with the dhtml version for those browsers
> > that would support it (make sense?).
>
> Yes, agree 100%. (This is what the file-styler script
> did.) A solution that breaks the form for people without
> JavaScript is no solution at all IMO. Scripts should
> augment the functionality of a web site, not recklessly
> break its accessibility.
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i couldn't agree with you more.

have a good one,

.jeff

http://evolt.org/
jeff at members.evolt.org
http://members.evolt.org/jeff/