Comments on: Expected Wufoo Markup Changes for HTML5 Forms Upgrade

By: Jim Denmark

Jim Denmark — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 15:24:43 +0000

Hey there, we have been using the form embed script to provide an https: version of the wufoo forms within our secure site and since this update, the html5 shiv hosted on Google code embedded in the forms as is now causing all our IE clients to receive security zone warnings when accessing the survey. This reflects very poorly on us and many of our users now think there is a security issue with our service when in actual fact, none exists. Is there an https: version of the google code repository or some other place you could fetch this from?

By: Alex Burns

Alex Burns — Sat, 16 Apr 2011 20:04:02 +0000

Test

By: Chris Coyier

Chris Coyier — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 21:14:45 +0000

Hey Mike, thanks a lot for voicing your concerns about this. We did a ton of research on this stuff before moving forward with any of it. The most important thing to us is browser implementation of features. Of course we're watching the spec and rooting for it to be well written and have vendors adhere to it, ultimately what matters is what the browsers do. Every change we made the first priority was that it doesn't break the form in any way in how it works or looks. Then our priorities for any particular feature was to see if it would improve accessibility, usability, or semantics. If there was all benefit and no harm, we implemented it. Ultimately this means we are actually using very little of what HTML5 forms theoretically have to offer, but that may change as technologies mature.

We also certainly aren't perfect. We've already had to tweak and fix some things. We always learn a lot when something like this goes out to a whole user base! If you are seeing specific forms with cross browser issues, please let us know and we'll try and get you squared away.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:59:36 +0000

To be fair, it seems the problems my forms encountered where caused by maintenance on wufoo's servers (I guess so since some were not responding properly for a while), probably from the switch to HTML5 and now most of my forms respond correctly (few minor things to modify but it's way better). My problem with IE9 was totally unrelated as well, so sorry for complaining.

I still do believe that it would have been wiser to wait for validation from the W3C though. And I still fear for our sanity with cross-browsers compatibility in future HTML5 development.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 09:24:06 +0000

I don't think this was a wise move at all.

The W3C won't deliver their final draft for HTML5 before May 2011 and what you implemented is not aimed at mass production and is not yet ready for exploitation on a broad level. The WHATWG is doing a fine job but in my humble opinion, until HTML5 is fully validated and implemented correctly by the main browsers you shouldn't have gone that far. HTML5 and CSS3, especially concerning forms, are not rendered in the same way by Chrome, IE9 and Firefox 4. You have broke a lot of stuff by doing this, which had real damages for the business of your power users with loads of customized advanced forms in production.

Hidden fields now appear on IE9 because of security issues that the general public don't fully comprehend. Fonts are not always rendered properly on buttons either.

Your "legend" fields don't float properly on Firefox 4 making them impossible to read.

I haven't check everything yet but if HTML5 is all nice and sound for marketing purposes, it just triggered a massive IE6-like disease where all browsers go different ways and do whatever they like, leaving developers to sort out the mess with multiple fallbacks and hacks.

I really believe HTML5 is great for experimentation but not for production (yet). This not my personal feeling, this was the main statements by Microsoft, Google and Mozilla in every conferences or workshops I've attended lately.

I have tons of forms, very little time to repair them all and feel no joy spending time finding out why something works well in Chrome and not in Firefox 4 and so on. This is not very professional.

By: Andrey Petrov

Andrey Petrov — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 06:35:47 +0000

Really nice changes!

What about date field? Is HTML5 field suitable for this?

By: Kevin Hale

Kevin Hale — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:23:51 +0000

HI Jaky, I think you might have meant to comment on the latest blog post about attaching files to emails and sending using our WebHooks setup. Sending a link is just fine and it’s actually what we recommend to most users. You can see our earlier post talking about doing just what you said here:

http://wufoo.com/2011/02/21/how-to-send-a-file-after-a-form-is-submitted/

By: Jaky Astik

Jaky Astik — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 17:00:56 +0000

I don't do a lot of this stuff even though I allow users to download an eBook I offer them after filling the form. I uploaded my eBook to google sites file cabinet, linked it in confirmation email and I'm done. No scripts nothing. They got to download it from somewhere, so why not from my own link?