Part 4

New and Modified Form Elements

Forms have been a part of HTML since the very beginning. As Web sites have morphed into application frameworks, the basic form elements are beginning to show their age. A number of tools (including XForms and third-party add-ons like jQuery UI) have tried to give form elements a face-lift. HTML5 finally adds some much-needed attention to form elements. The standard includes several new form elements as well as a number of additions to the standard input element and new attributes that can be applied to any form element.

In this part . . .

check.pngIntroducing New Form Elements

check.pngExamining New Form Element Attributes

check.pngPlaying with New Form Input Types

New Form Elements

A number of new form elements have been introduced in HTML5. Each of these new tools adds a new capability. Of course, they’re not all supported yet, but they do show some promise. A notable subset of these form elements are designed to let a program modify a part of the page dynamically.

datalist

The datalist element allows the developer to attach a list of suggestions to a text input element. As soon as the user begins to type in the text field, the list of suggestions appears and the user ...

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