This was a fun little read. Just through testing the examples, I also learned datalist does not seem to work well on mobile safari (which is a large enough market I might even say there’s essentially no scenario in which it’s worth using if there’s a compatibility issue).
When I first had to use XML, I had to learn the XML spec and output it manually - serialization libraries didn’t really exist yet. I’ve since seen generation of juniors come up through the ranks using XML as an interchange format (and then JSON) without ever learning it fully. It was fine, and nothing terrible happened.
I’ve seen AJAX go from the hot new thing to people not knowing what it stood for, to now most people not even recognizing the term. AJAX didn’t die; it became so common we don’t need a word for it anymore.
>What if there’s a bunch of options, but for [reasons] we don’t want a user to be able to select a subset of them? Let’s add the disabled attribute to an optgroup
Seems broken in mobile safari, not actually disabled I can still select the disabled items.
Came here to mention the same thing. Very well be on me, tho. I’m using the Brave browser (is it safari-powered?) and on iOS 18.7.9, which is the newest my old iPhone X supports.
Good stuff, except don't get too excited about `datalist`. It just doesn't have enough hooks to be actually useful for anything other than a little prototype.
HTML linters actually help distinguish things like that? I'm curious if there are any linters out there that can enforce this kind of semantic tag selection.
SuperHTML validates not only syntax but also element nesting and attribute values. No other language server implements the full HTML spec in its validation code.
And yet, no native select + search combined, which is a very common kind of list. The datalist is basically unusable, because you don't know any of the options.
tl;dr: You _do_ know HTML lists, they're basicaly like they used to be 20 years ago. But there are HTML form controls which are list-like and this will tell you about them: <select> and <datalist> which have <option> elements and <menu> which has <li> elements.
It's a nice read, not very long and you can kind of leisurely skim it.
Somehow I'm still in the mode where I'm surprised where it is, rather than when it isn't, but yeah it's annoyingly often. Do you come across it so much that it's your default expectation now?
Edit: when not reading articles about AI or LLM-found vulnerabilities, of course. Those are universally LLM-supported and... very hit and miss in terms of the application of human quality control, let's say
I've looked at lists from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's HTML lists' illusions I recall
I really don't know HTML lists at all
It has been a problem for a long time if you want to support anything other than Chrome.
That's partially because Chrome keeps adopting standards nobody else wants to support.
unfortunately we have a new class of dev's that never learned html but went straight for React. Now with LLMs they will never learn HTML.
hence they reach for react components where simple html would have been sufficient.
When I first had to use XML, I had to learn the XML spec and output it manually - serialization libraries didn’t really exist yet. I’ve since seen generation of juniors come up through the ranks using XML as an interchange format (and then JSON) without ever learning it fully. It was fine, and nothing terrible happened.
I’ve seen AJAX go from the hot new thing to people not knowing what it stood for, to now most people not even recognizing the term. AJAX didn’t die; it became so common we don’t need a word for it anymore.
Seems broken in mobile safari, not actually disabled I can still select the disabled items.
https://caniuse.com/mdn-html_elements_optgroup_disabled
I think it may be a Safari bug.
Also doesnt work for me on iPhone Firefox
<MARQUEE>
</MARQUEE>Wait, not far enough back…
It’s OK if it’s a shim.
<MARQUEE DIRECTION="DOWN" BEHAVIOR="SLIDE">Slide</MARQUEE>
It's a nice read, not very long and you can kind of leisurely skim it.
Edit: when not reading articles about AI or LLM-found vulnerabilities, of course. Those are universally LLM-supported and... very hit and miss in terms of the application of human quality control, let's say