Am 15.03.2011 17:36 schrieb Christoph Päper:
Jukka K. Korpela:
Christoph Päper wrote:
<input type="number" id="fontsize" value="12" unit="pt">
Or do you mean that the presence of the unit="..." attribute would trigger a
special implementation of numeric input, so that the user is expected to enter both a
number and a unit, with the latter defaulted according to the unit attribute?
Yes.
UIs may autoconvert the value if the unit changes or keep it. I’m not sure
which solution is better.
Although the need for number& unit input is relatively common, I think it can
quite satisfactorily be handled using a number input field and e.g. a dropdown menu of
units accepted by an application (or maybe a textfield). After all, processing of the
form data would most probably want to split a combined number& unit data item into
its components, so why put them together in the first place?
Usability.
Maybe it would work better with ‘datalist’:
<input name=fontsize type=number unit=typo>
<datalist id=typo>
<option value=2.835 label=pt>
<option value=1 label=mm>
</datalist>
I like this approach because it is author configurable and extensible
beyond the rich text editor use case. A billing application might apply
a list of currencies with appropriate exchange rates for the day.
What I do not yet understand is, in what point does this proposal
enhance usability compared to a dropdown box with the units, and some
client side script that does the conversion?
