HTML 5 - form attributes and general usage.

Ok, I've been on and off web designing for nearly 8 years now, and its sage to say its been 2 years since I've done anything interesting. Back then HTML5 and CSS3 were not remotely deployable, heck apparently you can even use SVG in IE now. Total madness.

While CSS3 has plenty of benefits, HTML 5 doesn't do much for me. Things like menu, section, article seem completely pointless when ul, div and p already exist. While I'm in support for a standardized video format, the <video> tag isn't deployable and I'm fairly sure <object> can do everything it can. Frankly, I feel dirty using HTML5 on a strict doctype - nothing about it feels strict and almost presentational. <wbr> had me laughing out loud.

However, one thing I am liking the look of is some of the new form attributes. Inbuilt validation just seems dangerous, but I like the look of datalist, placeholder and even keygen.

Datalist should have been a feature ages ago - it's not easy to do a similar thing in Javascript and has legitimate uses.

However, placeholder currently has me in an ethical conundrum. If anyone is familiar with false simplicity - there are many reasons not to ever use a form placeholder. However there are reasonable uses for it.

Now the two options are available to the HTML5 placeholder attribute and Javascript. I hate using the HTML5, since its only compatible on most recent browsers and I have to lose the strict doctype. However the feature is not a core crucial, and if it doesn't work on a certain browser it won't compromise usability in the slightest. So basically f**k older IE.

Javascript has the advantage of being cross browser, but has the huge disadvantage of being a lot of code for a trivial feature. I'm really not sure what to use, the placeholder will add a small about of usability for the site, its not just for aesthetics.

Now I don't really have a point here, other than being unable to decide what to use for my site, but I'm just feeling that HTML5 doesn't seem to bring much to the table that we didn't already have.

 

Welcome to what I've been saying for several years now... and have refined greatly in recent months -- the net result after several years just being that HTML 5 is even DUMBER than I originally thought it was!

It isn't STRICT, it IS presentational, and in fact it undoes all the progress STRICT has offered developers the past DECADE AND A HALF!!!. Just take one look at ASIDE -- people are using it to say something is off to one side, how is that any different from CENTER? The only dictionary term for "aside" that makes any sense for a semantic meaning is a literary aside -- aka a monologue breaking the fourth wall while other characters are unaware of it (Think MacBeth or Ferris Beuller) -- so rare an occurrence on a website it might as well be the same thing as the ultimately useless and rarely if ever used ADDRESS tag.

The three elements you mentioned have their own worries...

DATALIST is troublesome because much like SELECT (and to be frank I HATE SELECTS -- for *** sake just let me type it in!) it actively encourages sending data client side that to be frank, might not be used. That's called code bloat. If the user never uses the input, it's a massive waste. This is one case where I'd prefer JS and AJAX on it, so that only information being used is actually sent client side... and scripting can at least be cached across pages, something markup doesn't do all that great a job of. Now, using these tags might make the scripting simpler/easier if you generate DATALIST's OPTION tags from the script, but at that point you're still looking at using enough scripting to make it pointless.

Seriously, how long before some eager-beaver up and decides to put the entire Websters abridged in OPTION tags thanks to DATALIST? You damned near have people doing that with SELECT already.

Placeholder is inaccessible CRAP. I didn't like it when people did it with scripting, why the devil would I like it as an attribute? GOD FORBID a designer be expected to make room for a LABEL. Pretty much this is presentational crap that if I WERE to try and implement, I'd do so by sliding the input over the label and setting it to visibility:hidden, then setting it to visible when focused. ... and I get the same way when people put the description of a SELECT in as an OPTION. MORONS!.

LABEL'S, USE THEM YOU IGNORANT ***** TWITS!!!!!

Then there's VIDEO and AUDIO -- poster children for undoing what STRICT was trying to accomplish... since OBJECT was put in to supplant the official tags IMG and EMBED, as well as to make it so that things like EMBED and BGSOUND pointless. The reasoning for this was to make it easier on developers so they only have to remember one tag and how one tag works, and to let the market decide which encoding and file formats could be used via plugins, rather than leaving us at the mercy of what browser makers 'feel like implementing'. There is NO legitimate reason the new scripting couldn't have simply targeted OBJECT, there is no reason the browser makers couldn't have made their in-built codecs work with it, and there is NO reason that if they wanted their favorite pet codecs on all browsers they couldn't have just made plugins to do it!

Those two tags exist for the sole reason of taking choice AWAY from us, and shoving browser makers favorite pet codecs down our throats. There are two groups responsible for this -- FLOSS-tards and Apple.

In the case of the FLOSS whackjobs they just have that idiotic 'fight the power' / 'rage against the machine' idiocy so hard-wired into them they want to strip everyone of the choice to use anything made by a corporation, and then have the cojones to call that "freedom"... Which is why time and time again I still say someone needs to explain to the dirty unwashed hippies at the FSF that socialism isn't freedom... and newsflash, OGG sucks. It has sucked for twenty blasted years, STOP trying to shove it down our throats! ... and no, Theora didn't make it better!

When it comes to Apple's role, it's just their typical user ABUSE via "our way or **** off" that's always been Jobbo the Clown's hallmark. I know, KNOW, FOR A FACT that losing the video format wars in the '90's has stuck in their craw, festering like an open wound! The laugh being that NONE of the big three in '90's streaming video actually won that war (Microsoft, RealNetworks, Apple) and instead some 'upstart' called Macromedia did. (Which it's hard now that Adobe owns it to think that Flash was the underdog / "also ran" at the time!). Apple has a history of being vindictive and outright back-stabbing to anything that conflicts with their "Our way or the highway" vendor lock-in...

... and that's literally ALL VIDEO and AUDIO seem to exist for, to force US to use THEIR favorite formats, and to hell with what the market will bear. God forbid browser makers be expected to (follow Google's lead and) sandbox plugins like they were supposed to when the concept originated some decade and a half ago, allowing us to have add or remove file formats to any browser without having to wait for the browser makers to get off their ass and do it...

Because of course, browser makers, even the "open source" ones have such a stunning record of fixing gaps in the 15 year old HTML 4 specification we need a new one for them to screw up implementing while still ignoring fixing the old one.

Again, as I've said at least three times a day for over four years, I cannot fathom how anyone is DUMB ENOUGH to see merit in HTML 5 so far as writing markup is concerned. It's pointless bloat, vendor lock-in, and pissing on accessibility from orbit --- the big joke of course being they promote it as providing the exact opposite, and worse people ARE actually DUMB ENOUGH to swallow it.

But what can you expect when there are people dumb enough to believe that putting the government in the insurance business is socializing health care... News flash, it isn't.

 

Well I asked for it...

I agree in general with what your saying, it is right, though from I'd like to run through some points:

For any long datalist yea. Not that datalist is useable yet, but the problem I have with doing it in JS and AJAX is that...it's not easy to do. I started trying to make one to prove a point, and while I can get something similar appearance wise, its always offset an annoying amount, plus no keyboard navigation which is a huge bummer. I'm sure there are scripts that can do it, but as I'm sure you can appreciate, I don't trust others scripts and my knowledge of Javascript is average at best. If you have any suggestions on the subject I'd love to hear them.

Datalist does have a legitimate use, its just most people will abuse the hell out of it.


Placeholder as an alternative to label is wrong. Completely agree there, what I interpret "placeholder" to be, is not as a label but as almost an instruction. For example, say you have a recipe and ingredient database and a search form. You clearly use label to label the field as "Search" but you would use placeholder as literally a placeholder search term for demonstration purpose, so

 <label>Search: <input type="text" placeholder="e.g 'olives' or 'clam chowder'" /></label> 

HTML:

.


I have no strong arguments for <video>, though I'm not opposed to a standard codec. <audio> means nothing to me since I never listen to audio on websites.

You'd think they'd have just copied that from Webkit by now.