[thelist] Netscape 6.1, radiobuttons, and DTD

[Hardacker, Andrew]

<snip>
> yes.  it's not specified directly in the html spec, but there's a relevant
> rfc for it.  what's more, there's already established browser behavior all
> the way back to ie3, believe it or not, that dictates the default behavior
> as stated by rfc 1866 (section 8.1.2.4).
>
> http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1866.txt
</snip>

Forgive me if someone has mentioned this already (digest-er - always behind)
but RFC1866 was made obsolete by RFC2854.

http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2854.txt

The HTML 4.01 Rec backed off from the "you must" stance to the more moderate
"you should".

(quotation below from http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#radio)
"Since user agent behavior differs, authors should ensure that in each set
of radio buttons that one is initially 'on'."

A while back I had to implement a form which asked a number of personal
questions such as "Have you ever been convicted of a felony?". The yes/no
question had to be answered -- no pleading the fifth, no sudden lapse of
memory -- and we discovered that if we preselected the answer people rarely
bothered to change it, leading to much confusion.

We decided that making no selection on the radio button pair would force the
customer to think about the question before answering. Well, that's our
stand and we're sticking to it.

Andy Hardacker