Making mixed numeric and alpha entry easier for mobile browers

Question

I'm refurbishing a simple web-app that our field techs use. One of my goals is to make it Blackberry-friendly, as all of the techs are now using those. This app accepts basic information about a job and stores it. Among that info are times, telephone numbers, and a street address.

I have the time fields and telephone fields figured out with the following CSS:

     input.time  { -wap-input-format: "NN\\:NN"; }
     input.phone { -wap-input-format: "\\(nnn\\)\\ nnn\\-nnnn" }

What I'm trying to do is determine how I can have the phone default to numeric input on an address field, then go alpha once a space has been inserted. I'm assuming that this can't be done with the -wap-input-format property above.

Is there another way--even if it's only for the Blackberry Browser--to do this without resorting to JavaScript? (Not that there's anything wrong with that :-) )

Thanks.

Answer 1

Have you considered a "Street Number" field followed by a separate "Street Name" field? There is no way to have a variable number of digits at the start of this sort WAP input field without using JavaScript.

Answer 2

I've found that javascript alone is the only way to do a decent job of subtle user input validation. Markup creates more challenges than it solves. With js you can let whatever keystrokes mean whatever you want, customized to any context.