G'day folks
Firstly, apologies to Chris for not noticing that he'd already referred Mario to Cameron's article
Secondly, Drew's points:
> It may make styling easier but incorporating form controls in labels has a
> different meaning than associating a label and a form control. For one
> thing, it isn't usable for those choosing a table layout for forms. Nor is
> it possible to use an incorporated form control with multiple labels.
Both very good points. Obviously incorporating form controls and labels wouldn't make sense for a typical tabular form layout. On the other hand, I don't know why you'd want to use tables for layout when you could style the elements themselves
I guess there could be some cases where you NEED multiple inputs to be associated with each other as tabular data - perhaps an editable data grid or the like? In which case, not being able to assign multiple labels to each input would also be an issue
I don't see standard web forms (ie detail-gathering for shopping, membership registration, feedback etc) as requiring a table structure. Those sort of forms inevitably have simpler internal relationships
Back to the multiple labels: Again, there are definitely scenarios (such as the one above) where they could be put to good use. However, I've never actually done it. Every time I've come across a potential use for multiple labels, I've realised that my form simply needs better specification
Obviously all of the above is completely subjective. Maybe I'm the only one who has never needed to do either of the things Drew mentioned. As he said:
> Use what you want, but use it correctly.
For my money, incorporating form controls inside labels is my default construction for form HTML. Occasionally, I've needed to consider other options, but each time some creative CSS has produced the required layout and saved me changing the HTML
Oh, and I still use the FOR attribute, regardless of implicit associations
Cheers, Lachlan ****************************************************** The discussion list for http://webstandardsgroup.org/
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