Pickin’ dates on iOS

This is a little follow-up to my post about web components for date inputs.

If you try the demo on iOS it doesn’t work. There’s nothing stopping you selecting any date.

That’s nothing to do with the web components. It turns out that Safari on iOS doesn’t support min and max on date inputs. This is also true of any other browser on iOS because they’re all just Safari in a trenchcoat …for now.

I was surprised — input type="date" has been around for a long time now. I mean, it’s not the end of the world. You’d have to do validation on inputted dates on the server anyway, but it sure would be nice for the user experience of filling in forms.

Alas, it doesn’t look like this is something on the interop radar.

What really surprised me was looking at Can I Use. That shows Safari on iOS as fully supporting date inputs.

Maybe it’s just semantic nitpickery on my part but I would consider that the lack of support for the min and max attributes means that date inputs are partially supported.

Can I Use gets its data from here. I guess I need to study the governance rules and try to figure out how to submit a pull request to update the currently incorrect information.

Building WebSites With LLMS - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

And by LLMS I mean: (L)ots of (L)ittle ht(M)l page(S).

I really like this approach: using separate pages instead of in-page interactions. I remember Simon talking about how great this works, and that was a few years back, before we had view transitions.

I build separate, small HTML pages for each “interaction” I want, then I let CSS transitions take over and I get something that feels better than its JS counterpart for way less work.

Taking RWD To The Extreme — Smashing Magazine

Some really great advice here:

• Use native layout systems
• Start with semantic HTML
• Use fluid type with fluid space
• Always bet on progressive enhancement
• Trust the browser
• Ditch the “physical” CSS

HTML Is Actually a Programming Language. Fight Me | WIRED

When haters deny HTML’s status as a programming language, they’re showing they don’t understand what a language really is. Language is not instructing an interlocutor what to do in a way that leaves no room for other interpretations; it is better and richer than that. Like human language, HTML is conversational. It is remarkably adept at adapting to context. It can take a different shape on any machine, from a desktop browser or an e-reader screen to a mobile app or a screen reader for the blind (so long as that device is built to present hypertext).

Hell, yeah!

Ultimately, even as HTML has become the province of professionals, it cannot be gatekept. This is what makes so many programmers so anxious about the web, and sometimes pathetically desperate to maintain the all-too-real walls they’ve erected between software engineers and web developers.

Hell, yeeeeaaaaahhh!!!

What other programmers might say dismissively is something HTML lovers embrace: Anyone can do it. Whether we’re using complex frameworks or very simple tools, HTML’s promise is that we can build, make, code, and do anything we want.

MomBoard: E-ink display for a parent with amnesia

Technology doesn’t have to be terrible. Here’s an absolutely wonderful use of an e-ink display:

I made as much use of vanilla HTML and CSS as possible. I used a small amount of JavaScript but no framework or other libraries.

An origin trial for a new HTML <permission> element  |  Blog  |  Chrome for Developers

This looks interesting. On the hand, it’s yet another proprietary creation by one browser vendor (boo!), but on the other hand it’s a declarative API with no JavaScript required (yay!).

Even if this particular feature doesn’t work out, I hope that this is the start of a trend for declarative access to browser features.