[thelist] with Enter, onBlur is preceded by onSubmit

[.jeff]

ken,

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> From: Ken Kogler
>
> > seriously though, why cripple behavior users are
> > accustomed to simply because you find it annoying?
>
> If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it
> too? :-)
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i'm a human, not a lemming, so no.

;p

seriously though, it sounds like you consider form submission with the enter
key to be a really bad thing.  that's unfortunate as it saves users untold
amounts of time when dealing with forms as they don't have to take their
hands from the keyboard, move them to the mouse, move the cursor around the
screen until they've got it on the submit button, and then click it.

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> > what about this behavior is problematic, in your
> > opinion?
>
> I didn't really notice it until my school had me build
> them an online admissions application. I built it (split
> across 2 pages), and as soon as it went live, we started
> getting incomplete form submissions from the IE users.
> Turns out people were pressing 'enter' too early and
> submitting incomplete forms.
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so?  if there was additional data that was required you should have had some
validation in place to require it.  unless you spoke with every person that
submitted too little information and they told you they pressed the "enter"
key, then you can only assume that was the cause.  it could have just as
easily been a problem with the ui not clearly indicating to the user what
was required and what was optional.

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> Granted, this wouldn't be a problem if they had let me
> do any kind of validation on the input, but that would
> have "added to the wait time" by too much...
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ah, so partial and even completely garbage data was acceptable then?

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> I think overall, using enter to submit a form can be a
> good idea, especially with shorter forms like logins.
> It's just that with longer forms, it starts to yeild
> bad results.
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not if you're smart and have validation in place.  then it doesn't matter
what size the form is.  those users that press "enter" and haven't
satisfactorily completed the form yet will be told what it's missing or
incorrect while the rest get the convenience of the "enter" key working for
them.

i have just one quick question in summary.  it's sort of rhetorical.  why
would you never validate data that's coming in from a form?  (of course, the
answer is "what?  not validate data?  that's crazy!").

.jeff

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