form field sizing

**Jukka K. Korpela** · Feb 9 '08, 06:45 PM

Re: form field sizing

Scripsit Jeff:

I've always set form element sizes by using size on textfields and
rows and cols on textareas.

Fine. Just make sure you enlargen them to be sufficient. That's more
than they currently are, probably. Too many textareas are stamp-size.
Too few fields for surname input do not allow Mrs.
Hämäläinen-Virrankoski to enter her name visibly.

That's always lead to inconsistencies and a bit of guesswork when
you want a form element to fill a fixed width and you want textfields
to be as wide as textareas.

Then stop wanting such things.

The widths are for convenient input, not for the author's esthetic eye.

Now, we can use a bit of CSS to set the width and for textareas also
the height.

That doesn't mean we should.

Is that a good idea, and if so should I still set size, cols and
rows?

Consider the CSS Caveats:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/css-caveats.html

Besides, the cols and rows attributes are required in a textarea element
by HTML syntax. And you should always set the size attribute for a
single-line text input field, since its default value is unspecified.

It seems like every few years I have to unlearn something.

Indeed. But that's a different story.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

**Ben C** · Feb 9 '08, 09:45 PM

Re: form field sizing

On 2008-02-09, Jukka K. Korpela <jkorpela@cs.tu t.fiwrote:
[...]

Consider the CSS Caveats:
http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/css-caveats.html

One thing you say there is "CSS Support varies [...] For form fields,
many CSS properties are often ignored by browsers".

It's not really lack of "support" for anything. Any CSS styling you can
do on form fields at all is a bonus. As far as the CSS 2.1 specification
is concerned, buttons, textareas, etc., are replaced elements. You
shouldn't expect to be able to style them with CSS properties at all,
although most browsers do let you set a few things.

**Jeff** · Feb 10 '08, 12:45 AM

Re: form field sizing

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Scripsit Jeff:
>

> I've always set form element sizes by using size on textfields and
>rows and cols on textareas.

>
Fine. Just make sure you enlargen them to be sufficient. That's more
than they currently are, probably. Too many textareas are stamp-size.
Too few fields for surname input do not allow Mrs.
Hämäläinen-Virrankoski to enter her name visibly.

Oddly, my default text field is 30, which is more than that. And I
usually make textareas 55 x 4 sometimes with an auto lengthen.

The trouble is that you usually want textareas to take up the max
width and generally you have to downsize them to due to width
requirements on some browser. That's why I thought style="width: 100%"
would be nice. I'll have to read the caveats later to see why that isn't
so.

Jeff

>

> That's always lead to inconsistencies and a bit of guesswork when
>you want a form element to fill a fixed width and you want textfields
>to be as wide as textareas.

>
Then stop wanting such things.
>
The widths are for convenient input, not for the author's esthetic eye.
>

> Now, we can use a bit of CSS to set the width and for textareas also
>the height.

>
That doesn't mean we should.
>

> Is that a good idea, and if so should I still set size, cols and
>rows?

>
Consider the CSS Caveats:

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/css-caveats.html

>
Besides, the cols and rows attributes are required in a textarea element
by HTML syntax. And you should always set the size attribute for a
single-line text input field, since its default value is unspecified.
>

> It seems like every few years I have to unlearn something.

>
Indeed. But that's a different story.
>

**Jukka K. Korpela** · Feb 10 '08, 04:05 PM

Re: form field sizing

Scripsit Jeff:

I never was fond of scrollbars on textareas, so on
textareas that could need to be very long (or not at all), I simple
add a couple rows when needed. Been doing it for 4 or 5 years. As far
as I know,
I'm the only one that does that.

Now you're explaining something that you yourself characterize as
unique, and later you're telling that you work with px dimensioned
layout as so many others. Somehow this does not add up.

No complaints so far.

Web users don't complain. They just go away, or don't get the job done,
or start hating the site.

>Anyway, 4 is far from sufficient for any normal textarea.

>
Actually I find most textarea needs are far less than that.

I'm speechless. See above. It's an insult to users to ask them to send
feedback, or add any comments, and allocate the ridiculous four lines
for it.

Aesthetics my boy. Edges should line up. Set a width for you form,
either in % or pixels and the right edges should align. Just as the
left do.

That's poor usability, since the lengths of fields don't act as clues
any more.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

**Jukka K. Korpela** · Feb 10 '08, 04:55 PM

Re: form field sizing

Scripsit Jukka K. Korpela:

There's no "half-replaced element" concept in CSS, so any _partial_
support to CSS features for, say, <inputelement s violates CSS
specifications (or "specifications ").

Oops. My conclusion is not correct, due to a specific looseness
statement in the CSS 2.1 draft:

"CSS 2.1 does not define which properties apply to form controls and
frames, or how CSS can be used to style them. User agents may apply CSS
properties to these elements. Authors are recommended to treat such
support as experimental. A future level of CSS may specify this
further."

Conformance: requirements and recommendations

http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS21/conform.html#conformance

So browsers may "legimately " ignore all style sheet rules for form
fields, or implement them, or anything between these two extremes.
Moreover, the CSS 2.1 draft does not specify _how_ the properties might
apply to fields; for example, if you set the background of a radio
button, does this mean the thing inside the circle, or a hypothetical
rectangle around it, or both?

The looseness statement is not present in CSS 2.0, which is, unlike CSS
2.1, a "W3C Recommendation" , though not recommended by the W3C. In
practice, it's a useful warning.

--
Jukka K. Korpela ("Yucca")

http://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/

**Bergamot** · Feb 10 '08, 07:05 PM

Re: form field sizing

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>
This vagueness reflects the fact that browsers have used built-in
routines of underlying systems to implement form fields,

That seems only partially true, or more specifically, they may partially
use built-in routines of underlying systems.

Safari, for example, seems to ignore styling of submit buttons, but it
doesn't just take the default styling of the O/S, either. The Windows
version of Safari styles form fields unlike anything else in my whole
system. Ditto Opera.

--
Berg

**Jeff** · Feb 10 '08, 07:05 PM

Re: form field sizing

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

Scripsit Jeff:
>

>I never was fond of scrollbars on textareas, so on
>textareas that could need to be very long (or not at all), I simple
>add a couple rows when needed. Been doing it for 4 or 5 years. As far
>as I know,
>I'm the only one that does that.

>
Now you're explaining something that you yourself characterize as
unique, and later you're telling that you work with px dimensioned
layout as so many others. Somehow this does not add up.

Now, you've snipped that without noting and removed the meaning in the
process.

>

>No complaints so far.

>
Web users don't complain. They just go away, or don't get the job done,
or start hating the site.
>

>>Anyway, 4 is far from sufficient for any normal textarea.

>>
>Actually I find most textarea needs are far less than that.

>
I'm speechless. See above. It's an insult to users to ask them to send
feedback, or add any comments, and allocate the ridiculous four lines
for it.

Surely you realize that there are many other uses for textareas? You
were just talking about how a textfield is often insufficient.

My default is either 4 or 5. Making forms is a typical thing to do, so
like any programmer would, I have a utility where you input the field
names, label, types... and that spits out an editable form with the
database table code. Sizes can get fine tuned from there and styles
added. Perhaps you haven't seen enough live data to get a feel for what
web surfers do... Or that feedback is only one use, and certainly you
would have more than 4 rows for such a textarea. I certainly don't spend
my time writing contact forms and I know of no one else who does. But if
you have a typical form with perhaps a half dozen or so of textfields,
options and textareas you don't want to make all the textareas so long
that the page scrolls and scrolls and scrolls, that is discouraging to a
user. You should be able to see the end.

Jeff

>

>Aesthetics my boy. Edges should line up. Set a width for you form,
>either in % or pixels and the right edges should align. Just as the
>left do.

>
That's poor usability, since the lengths of fields don't act as clues
any more.

Well, I don't understand how you could come the end of a textarea and
not know you were there.

>

**Ed Mullen** · Feb 10 '08, 07:55 PM

Re: form field sizing

Bergamot wrote:

Jukka K. Korpela wrote:

>This vagueness reflects the fact that browsers have used built-in
>routines of underlying systems to implement form fields,

>
That seems only partially true, or more specifically, they may partially
use built-in routines of underlying systems.
>
Safari, for example, seems to ignore styling of submit buttons, but it
doesn't just take the default styling of the O/S, either. The Windows
version of Safari styles form fields unlike anything else in my whole
system. Ditto Opera.
>

FYI

form field sizing

form field sizing

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