[thelist] Netscape 6.1, radiobuttons, and DTD

[martin.p.burns at uk.pwcglobal.com]

Memo from Martin P Burns of PricewaterhouseCoopers

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Hi Lon

It makes perfect sense to me (assuming you meant the RFC requirement) and
follows extremely logically.

Radio Buttons have an analagous behaviour to dropdown boxes in that you
have to choose one (and only one) of them.

Now if UAs don't follow the hint (and it's annoying that it's a hint) of
the HTML spec that the RFC is the way to go, that's the fault of the
browser makers.

As evidenced by the CSS debate, standards are A Good Thing, and should be
followed so you get predictable (and ideally logical) results.

Do I know of a UA which follows it? NS6.1 apparently.

Cheers
Martin


Subject:    Re: [thelist] Netscape 6.1, radiobuttons, and DTD

Indeed, here is the relevant paragraph:

8.1.2.4. Radio Button: INPUT TYPE=RADIO

   An <INPUT> element with `TYPE=RADIO' represents a boolean choice. A
   set of such elements with the same name represents a 1-of-many choice
   field. The NAME and VALUE attributes are required as for check boxes.
   Optional attributes are:

    CHECKED
            indicates that the initial state is on.
   At all times, exactly one of the radio buttons in a set is checked.
   If none of the <INPUT> elements of a set of radio buttons specifies
   `CHECKED', then the user agent must check the first radio button of
   the set initially.

   For example:

    <p>Which is your favorite?
    <input type=radio name=flavor value=vanilla>Vanilla<br>
    <input type=radio name=flavor value=strawberry>Strawberry<br>
    <input type=radio name=flavor value=chocolate>Chocolate<br>

<snip>

This makes NO sense to me and further, I don't believe I've ever seen this
behavior implemented in any browser I've ever used. Do you know of a user
agent that follows this directive? Is it something that may be implemented
in forthcoming browsers... something that perhaps we should start using in
our coding? Does anyone else code to this spec?



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