Chris W. Parker wrote:
Clientside validation is all about usability.
A few points:
* Personally, I find it frustrating when applications (on the web) automatically move
my cursor from one box to another. Like when typing in a date and there are three
boxes for month, day, and year. I type in 11, press <tab>, and type 24 to
realize that I'm in the wrong box.
That isn't a particular web app problem. I find the mechanism quite
helpful when entering serial numbers (apart from entering serial numbers
being quite an ugly process in general). Entering dates in three
different input fields is ugly anyway. I think a single input field
together with a datepicker is quite usable for both fast-typers and
mouse-pushers.
Maybe that wouldn't apply in this masked input fields case since the interface
is a little different but I can't say for sure without testing it.
Masked-input gives you visual hints of the expected input and its very
easy to learn that you don't have to enter any delimiters.
Overall, I'm not very happy with applications that move my cursor around for me
or select text automatically. Like when you click into a form field (phpMyAdmin
comes to mind) and all the text is automatically selected.
* Even though "clientside validation is all about usability" many people don't
understand this and still use it as a security measure.
Right, but should we prohibit cars just because people die in car accidents?
--
Jörn Zaefferer
http://bassistance.de
