[ic] Keeping the "selected" tag up
Mike Heins
mike at perusion.com
Wed Oct 22 22:47:20 EDT 2003
Quoting Grant (listbox at email.com):
> The selected tag seems to be designed to be used to output HTML like this:
>
> <option SELECTED value="1">1
>
> but the proper method is specified here:
> http://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_option.asp as:
>
> <option selected="selected" value="1">1
They can say it is the proper way, but the HTML spec differs. It is an
attribute that has an implicit value, and you need not add ="selected".
HTML 4.0 spec 17.6:
In this example, we create a menu that allows the user to select which
of seven software components to install. The first and second
components are pre-selected but may be deselected by the user. The
remaining components are not pre-selected. The size attribute states
that the menu should only have 4 rows even though the user may select
from among 7 options. The other options should be made available
through a scrolling mechanism.
The SELECT is followed by submit and reset buttons.
<FORM action="http://somesite.com/prog/component-select" method="post">
<P>
<SELECT multiple size="4" name="component-select">
<OPTION selected value="Component_1_a">Component_1</OPTION>
<OPTION selected value="Component_1_b">Component_2</OPTION>
<OPTION>Component_3</OPTION>
<OPTION>Component_4</OPTION>
<OPTION>Component_5</OPTION>
<OPTION>Component_6</OPTION>
<OPTION>Component_7</OPTION>
</SELECT>
<INPUT type="submit" value="Send"><INPUT type="reset">
</P>
</FORM>
Note they, in their authoritative example, do not use it in the
way you say is proper. In fact, they recommend you don't do it
that way.
B.3.4 Boolean attributes
Authors should be aware that many user agents only recognize the
minimized form of boolean attributes and not the full form.
For instance, authors may want to specify:
<OPTION selected>
instead of
<OPTION selected="selected">
--
Mike Heins
Perusion -- Expert Interchange Consulting http://www.perusion.com/
phone +1.513.523.7621 <mike at perusion.com>
Being against torture ought to be sort of a bipartisan thing.
-- Karl Lehenbauer
More information about the interchange-users
mailing list