HTML: Mis-Typing Good Or Bad?

Question

I happened to write this:

<input type="hdnStatus" name="hidden" value="1" />

Instead of:

<input type="hidden" name="hdnStatus" value="1" />

I was surprised that the first line generated a text box with no correct type specified.

If first line generates text box, then is the below line of any use:

<input type="text" name="tbox" value="" />

It definitely is. What I mean is that rendering engines should be smart enough to reject any incorrect input. Such things always create confusion and problems.

How did that happen?
Is this browser's fault or something else?
Or it is something wrongly correct?

Answer 1

All browsers (that I am aware of) will degrade to an input with type="text" if the type attribute is not valid.

Some people have even advocated using this to your advantage to get ready for HTML 5, which has more types.

For example you could do:

<input type="date" ...

which would still be a regular text box, but the fact that the type is distinct, you can use javascript/css to make it more usable by adding a datepicker or something automatically.

And then, once HTML 5 actually does come around, the browser itself would be able to render a custom input widget that is specific for dates.

Another usage of this feature is type="number", which is also a valid type in HTML 5. Using javascript to monitor fields with type number would allow for immediate feedback to the user if the data they entered was not actually a number.

Answer 2

From the HTML 4.01 spec:

Attribute definitions

type = text|password|checkbox|radio|submit|reset|file|hidden|image|button [CI] This attribute specifies the type of control to create. The default value for this attribute is "text".

So it appears that your browser falls back to the default value for type if it is invalid. This seems like sensible behaviour to me.