Text fields (and textareas) are Form elements, they are only properly
used in the context of sending information to the server. So as long
as that is what you are doing, you’re fine to use them. But if you’re
using them to display text, then as the cats say, “You’re doing it
wrong”.
Which brings me to my next point. A form element is drawn by the
browser, and most Web sites use the default browser appearance, and
therefore that’s what a visitor is accustomed to seeing. The fact that
you CAN style a form element to look like nearly anything using CSS is
a double-edged sword. It is trivially easy to make a form element look
like something that does not accept user input, and unless you then
erect a billboard near it, the visitor may never see that they are
supposed to enter anything.
I have an Action called FreezeFormAction which will fix the size issue
for you, and Mike Brackenridge has another called Form Element Styler
which lets you go further: fixing the size and adding style to your
form elements. (Obviously, use only one of them at a time.) Both of
these are on ActionsForge.
I have been guilty of making my form fields look like Safari’s on
every platform, which usually confuses the Windows folk more than it
elevates them into the pure light of The Macintosh Way. For a Mac-
centric site like ActionsForge, I will still do that (view the site in
Firefox and Safari side-by-side, and note the search field. The
difference between FF and Safari are miniscule, because I’ve used as
screenshot of Safari as the background for the FF search field, and
used the CSS Sprite technique to shift a screenshot of a “focused”
search field into view when you click into the field.
But for a general-audience site, I recommend against styling the form
elements in any way beyond dimensions. If it doesn’t look like a form
field to the user, how will they know to use it?
Walter
On Apr 25, 2009, at 11:55 AM, TeamSDA wrote:
It appears that HTML Text Fields behave differently than HTML Items.
Can anyone assist us with the following questions relating to HTML
Text Fields?
01 - How do you apply a text style?
02 - How do you give the background a color?
03 - How do you assign a border?
04 - The text box is shorter when published. I see the size
attribute but increasing it or decreasing it appears to only
correlate correctly with the final output. The field is always
larger than necessary in the Freeway working environment. What is
happening here?
Thank You, Team SDA
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