[thelist] clear form code

[Luther, Ron]

Matt Warden noted:


>>It's not a "letter of the spec" issue. It's an issue of making your
client happy, 
>>which is not possible with radio buttons without a hack like you
describe above or 
>>without relying on how a subset of user agents seem to handle this
particular error case today.

>>It only makes sense if you can guarantee that all user agents that
will ever be used 
>>in the system will leave all radio buttons in the group unselected.

True.  It's not 'future proof'.  But is it 'today proof'?
Are there any user agents of any note, 'in the wild', that don't do this
today?

(a) I'm not aware of any, so if there are any I really would like to
know.  

(b) I also just took a quick look at today's /. poll, where they use
radio buttons 
without a default selection.  I suspect their user base contains more
odd user agents 
than many sites ever see and a population of users eager to whine if
functionality isn't 
working quite right in last night's build of 'Moquetta 0.0.2 & 1/2'.



>>Or I could just comply with the standard, with no additional effort,
and save 
>>my client money in the long run.

Okay.  I'll bite.  What's an easier, standards compliant way to handle
this without 
violating any user requirements?  [e.g. User must be forced to select.
No default. 
No multi-select.]

- checkboxes would be a bigger coding hack
- drop-down control without default runs into the same code effort as
radio buttons
- multiple command buttons?  Might work okay for this example, but
doesn't scale 
if there is a second vote or survey question.



If you're putting up a 'Hot or Not' page, radio buttons seem an
intuitive UI choice, 
but a default "no decision made" selection really kind of ruins the
whole vibe.


RonL.

{Ah Max, we're just having some fun!}  ;-)