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WHATWG calls for 'Last' Comments on Web Forms

Posted by timothy on from the they-should-be-rounder-and-firmer dept.

hixie writes " The W3C recently acknowledged a version of the Web Forms 2.0 draft submitted to the W3C by Mozilla and Opera. Meanwhile the WHATWG has updated the Web Forms draft and released a new call for comments. Send them in!"

22 comments

  1. What Working Group?? by cylcyl · · Score: 3, Funny

    What does the What Working group work on ?? What? What?

    1. Re:What Working Group?? by AntsInMyPants · · Score: 5, Informative
      From the main page linked to in the article...

      What is the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group?

      It is a loose unofficial collaboration of Web browser manufacturers and interested parties who wish to develop new technologies designed to allow authors to write and deploy Applications over the World Wide Web.

      The working group mailing list is an open subscription public mailing list and anyone is welcome to contribute.

      The focus of this working group is limited to technologies that will need to be directly implemented in Web browsers. It is not the right forum for very domain-specific proposals that would not be suitable for implementation in, for instance, Safari, Firefox, or Opera.

    2. Re:What Working Group?? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 1

      They work on who getting to third base.

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    3. Re:What Working Group?? by great+throwdini · · Score: 1
      They work on who getting to third base.

      Brilliant!

    4. Re:What Working Group?? by EnronHaliburton2004 · · Score: 1

      Thanks for getting it! :)

      --
      94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
    5. Re:What Working Group?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What is the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group? Yes, but who's on first?

  2. Input validation schemes by Magic+Thread · · Score: 2, Informative
    From W3C's summary:
    The ability to mark a form field as required (ie. the user must complete the field before the form is submitted).
    Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can anyone else see lazy PHP coders relying on this, and forgetting to do proper server-side input checking? I mean, essentially you're just having to check everything twice... what was wrong with returning a page informing the user of his or her mistakes, exactly?
    1. Re:Input validation schemes by Nasarius · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can anyone else see lazy PHP coders relying on this, and forgetting to do proper server-side input checking?

      No need to pick on the PHP coders -- you can just as easily write unchecked Perl, ASP, Python, etc -- but yes, some of the biggest website vulnerabilities are caused by relying too much on JavaScript to validate input.

      I mean, essentially you're just having to check everything twice... what was wrong with returning a page informing the user of his or her mistakes, exactly?

      It's a little faster for the user (instant feedback on any mistakes), and it saves a tiny bit of server resources. And it should replace all the JavaScript hacks with one standard interface.

      --
      LOAD "SIG",8,1
    2. Re:Input validation schemes by hhlost · · Score: 2, Informative

      It's a little faster for the user (instant feedback on any mistakes), and it saves a tiny bit of server resources.

      Depends on what's being uploaded. If it's large, then it could be a lot faster for the user and save a lot of server resources.

    3. Re:Input validation schemes by ESqVIP · · Score: 1
      Maybe I'm being paranoid, but can anyone else see lazy PHP coders relying on this, and forgetting to do proper server-side input checking?

      I may be wrong, but I believe one of the greatest advantages of XForms for the developer is exactly that, since you have all those rules and constraints defined in a XML format, it is incredibly easy (provided your server-side language supports this) for you to use the very same XML to produce a HTML form (through Web Forms) and to do server-side checking.

      All you have to do is to build a form specification and a XML skeleton for input. You'll use Web Forms technology to convert that into an user-accessible form (his browser may not support XForms) with client-side checking, and XForms technology to do a redundant security check in the server side. I, for one, feel very pleased with that: easier for me and more secure at the same time.

    4. Re:Input validation schemes by krumms · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It's a little faster for the user (instant feedback on any mistakes), and it saves a tiny bit of server resources. And it should replace all the JavaScript hacks with one standard interface.

      What's to stop server side code from parsing the XForms (or Web Forms or whatever your choice of poison is) to extract validation information, and then do the _exact_ same checks on the server side? Why, it even makes your code more easily maintainable.

      I do something similar to this with my PHP framework using XML documents (for those wondering about the efficiency: so far it's been good enough for me, but with my framework there's nothing stopping one from cacheing the generated code as PHP, changing a line in a config file and continuing on without any interface changes), though I've not yet chosen my poison in terms of a standardized format: I'd like to just go with XForms, but who knows what bastardized format we'll be using in a few years time ...

    5. Re:Input validation schemes by krumms · · Score: 1

      Sorry to reply to my own post, but those interested in further reading on the topic of server-side XForms validation may find the XForms Constraints section of the XForms working draft interesting:

      http://www.w3.org/TR/2002/WD-xforms-20020118/sli ce 6.html#model-xformsconstraints

    6. Re:Input validation schemes by Darth_Burrito · · Score: 1

      Php solved this problem a long time ago with HTML_QuickForms. Setting a field to be required is trivial and you can choose to have it check server side or client side depending on your needs. You can enforce other rules like regular expression pattern matching just as easily and there's also a bunch of canned rules like "must be a valid email address". Of course, there are undoubtedly a lot of php coders that have never heard of pear... so I guess the point stands. And of course, there's still that crazy old hermit coding up CGI's in C.

    7. Re:Input validation schemes by 2short · · Score: 1

      "What's to stop server side code from parsing the XForms "

      There's nothing to stop you from doing it that way. It's just slower by a round-trip to the server (which could be a little or a lot), and uses server resources instead of client resources, when the latter are generally more available.

      Personally, I like to occasionally try my software using a slow dialup account several time-zones away from the server, since that will be the environment for plenty of my users. I avoid network round trips like the plaugue.

  3. this bit made me laugh... by dash2 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Similarly, attributes are defined to accept values that conform to certain syntaxes, but it is possible for authors to violate these constraints.

    Authors must not do this. User agent implementors may curse authors who violate these rules, and may persecute them to the full extent allowed by applicable international law.

    You can tell these guys have experience doing real implementations...

    1. Re:this bit made me laugh... by suitepotato · · Score: 1

      That was probably courtesy of the OMGWTF working group.

      --
      If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
  4. Grid Needed by FriedTurkey · · Score: 1

    Every web browser needs some kind of native grid/table spreadsheet style display box. Displaying rows of data gets ugly if the data gets wide. If a form could record the row/column selected it would very useful.

    1. Re:Grid Needed by sproketboy · · Score: 1

      JSF. http://developers.sun.com/prodtech/javatools/jscre ator/index.jsp

    2. Re:Grid Needed by merlin_jim · · Score: 1

      While we're wishing for some good UI... let's make sure the aforementioned grid includes resizeable, hideable, sortable columns.

      Oh and would it kill you guys to include some sort of early-bound scripting language? ECMA is nice and all but I can write VB code about 3 times faster than JavaScript all thanks to AutoComplete...

      --
      I am disrespectful to dirt! Can you see that I am serious?!
  5. If M$ won't participate by sproketboy · · Score: 0, Redundant
    Then why bother.

    (sorry, I had a very rough day)

  6. Seems awfully dismissive by ishmalius · · Score: 1
    While I believe that any/all Web standards be developed by the W3C, this statement:
    The W3C Team strongly recommend that future work should be in collaboration with the W3C HTML and XForms Working Groups in order to promote the development of a single community for improving forms on the Web. The W3C Team looks forward to working with Opera Software and The Mozilla Foundation to build consensus on unified approaches to forms and related Web technologies.
    ...sounds very petulant and has the NIH ("not invented here") attitude. Basically the guy is saying "do it our way if you want to play."

    I am in favor of XForms/SVG/etc over WHATWG, but still, nobody has more experience with implementing web standards than Mozilla, and they should definitely be one of the W3C's most valuable sources of input.