[HN Gopher] Implementing Vertical Form Controls
___________________________________________________________________
Implementing Vertical Form Controls
Author : ksec
Score : 156 points
Date : 2024-03-19 16:24 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (webkit.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (webkit.org)
| JoelEinbinder wrote:
| Interesting to me that WebKit gets vertical form controls before
| MacOS. I don't have any experience with vertically written
| languages. How important are these controls to computer usage in
| Japan? Does Windows have them?
| lebean wrote:
| Japan has adopted LTR long ago in TV and the web. Never seen a
| Japanese site formatted vertically. Newspapers and books are
| still vertical, but it's not really difficult to read one way
| or the other.
| laurieg wrote:
| At least in Japan, not important. Japanese is written
| vertically in novels, comics, newspapers and some writing in
| school, but almost everything else is written horizontally.
| Textbooks, manuals, letters from the bank, websites. Restaurant
| menus often go vertical for a more Japanese feel or horizontal
| for a more western one.
|
| That said, I think it's great to see this support added to
| webkit. A diverse web is good for everyone.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I suspect most of modern Japanese media is horizontal exactly
| because of a low support for vertical in digital.
| Multilingual applications and systems rarely favor i18n
| improvements for a smaller groups of users.
| csande17 wrote:
| Japan has a pretty strong local tech industry. Microsoft
| Word needed to add all kinds of features, including both
| vertical writing and weirder stuff like a dictionary of
| seasonal greeting phrases to use in formal correspondence
| (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-
| us/archive/blogs/office_globa...) to compete successfully
| with Japanese word processors.
|
| So I suspect the causality is the other way around; there
| wasn't much demand for vertical form controls for the same
| reason you don't write emails in cursive.
| fomine3 wrote:
| There's more usage of vertically written Japanese than you
| listed. Some signboards, some formal letters, many paperbooks
| (and ebook version), vast majority of non-technical magazines
| are still vertically written.
|
| Fortunately, for forms, I haven't seen any vertically written
| forms except school work.
| dfee wrote:
| When drafting a formal letter, does the author write it
| horizontally and present it vertically? Or, is the author
| expected to have skill at writing a 90 degree rotated
| character? Or, is the character not rotated, but just
| written in columns not rows?
| amenhotep wrote:
| > Or, is the character not rotated, but just written in
| columns not rows?
|
| This one. Think about it - they don't expect the reader
| to tilt his head 90 degrees to read it :)
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| How many characters tall is a Japanese book? English
| paperbacks seem to be similarly sized on the number of
| characters/words wide. Interface guidelines put an optional
| number of characters on a screen somewhere between 60-80.
| Books being taller than they are wide seem like it would
| stretch the limit to something harder to track for vertical
| writing.
| franciscop wrote:
| Note that Japanese characters are much bigger (+ meaning-
| packed) than Latin characters, so it's also harder to lose
| track of which line you are at IMHO.
| jinwoo68 wrote:
| The article mentions Korean but vertical writing is not used at
| all in Korea. It went out of fashion many decades ago. I'm not
| sure why safari decided to add this feature...
| samatman wrote:
| There's only one language in common use where vertical
| writing is effectively mandatory: Mongolian. They also use
| Cyrillic for historical reasons, and Latin script as a modern
| convenience for electronic communications, but the native
| script is vertical.
|
| That's enough reason to support it, imho. Japanese and
| Chinese are also routinely printed vertically, so that adds
| another billion and a half people who stand to benefit from
| it.
| yorwba wrote:
| At least in Mongolia, Cyrillic is dominant and usage of the
| traditional script is marginal, though there are efforts to
| bring it back.
|
| Most users of traditional Mongolian script are in China,
| where websites are in Chinese by default and Mongolian form
| elements are rare. They do exist though, and it would be
| nice if the search bar of this bookstore
| https://mn.dayangds.com/ could be vertical like everything
| else.
| robin_reala wrote:
| The Mongolian President's site[1] has a top-to-bottom
| search box and it seems to work in Safari fine.
|
| [1] https://president.mn/mng/
| yorwba wrote:
| Looks like mn.dayangds.com does UA sniffing so you only
| get the vertical search bar if the user-agent contains
| the string "Firefox/" followed by at least one digit.
| Ugh.
| SuperNinKenDo wrote:
| Nice to see meaningful updates like these. Curious to try these
| out on a polyglot page.
| afavour wrote:
| Of probably broader interest, linked on this post: Safari also
| now supports a native "toggle" style display for checkboxes.
| Which feels absolutely huge to me.
|
| https://webkit.org/blog/15054/an-html-switch-control/
| makapuf wrote:
| I understand having a popular widget is important, but I always
| fail to see why this is important when you have the simpler
| checkbox ? what is enabled by the toggle widget ?
| matteason wrote:
| This part of the article matches my understanding of the
| difference:
|
| > Switch versus checkbox
|
| > Generally, we recommend using a switch when the end user
| understands the user interface element as a setting that is
| either "on" or "off". A checkbox is well suited for when the
| end user would understand the element as something to be
| selected.
| robin_reala wrote:
| There's a little more to it than that too. A switch is
| typically setting something that takes effect immediately,
| whereas a checkbox is a state setting that needs to be
| saved to take effect.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Isn't that mostly just a coincidental outcome of
| smartphone apps preferring the fancy switches while also
| having "auto-saving" options while less dynamic web forms
| were stuck with checkboxes as standard elements?
|
| I've definitely seen checkboxes that took effect
| immediately as well, though rare.
| enlyth wrote:
| It's a useful distinction to have though, as a user I
| expect a toggle to take effect immediately, but with a
| checkbox I don't, it is usually used for a "dirty" state
| that has to be confirmed by a submit action
|
| There are situations were either behaviour is preferable
| to the other
| wruza wrote:
| That rule means you can't have any other controls on
| screen, because it's not true for them and you can get
| into a semi-saved state. I believe it was just a niche
| designer factoid which sort of made it to reality by
| posts claiming that it's true. But it's way below the
| user uncertainty threshold to become a useful rule.
|
| I'm not against immediate effects on switches (or any
| other controls), but they must clearly signal the
| immediate action. E.g. I've seen some UIs presenting a
| short spinner on its button and delaying the colors
| and/or the shift.
| lelandfe wrote:
| I've heard this said before, but I'm too skeptical to add
| it to my mental Rolodex of "common sense UX." I see far
| more sites _not_ doing that with switches, so I'm unsure
| the general population has that behavior internalized.
| mcfedr wrote:
| The article puts it quite well
|
| > Generally, we recommend using a switch when the end user
| understands the user interface element as a setting that is
| either "on" or "off". A checkbox is well suited for when the
| end user would understand the element as something to be
| selected.
| palmfacehn wrote:
| Many switch elements are styled in a way where the state is
| ambiguous. With checkboxes it is visually clear when
| something is enabled. Use an appropriately styled switch
| element if you need this feature for your dark pattern UX.
| poisonborz wrote:
| > Finally, some controls, such as checkbox and radio buttons, did
| not require any rendering changes. As "glyph-like" controls, they
| look the same in all writing modes.
|
| That checkbox checkmark begs to differ
| atonse wrote:
| I find this so interesting mainly as a programmer, to have to
| think about how they'd have to rethink age-old rendering and
| interaction models for form controls (rendering logic that's
| probably been in there for decades) and "flip" it in meaningful
| ways. This feels more substantial than right-to-left.
|
| I tried to search for the patch because I'm really curious as to
| exactly how much code had to be redone. If anyone has better luck
| than me, I'd love to see the overall ticket and patch.
|
| Update: I found this:
| https://github.com/WebKit/WebKit/commit/f65bcef60fd613c09d7e...
|
| Yeah looks like stuff you'd expect, like changing heights to
| logical heights, changing "Right" to "end" (not to minimize the
| work, I'm still intimidated by the sheer thought of designing
| this), but really interesting.
| morbicer wrote:
| I would like to hear from East Asian people if this is something
| they find useful.
|
| After 30ish years of internet without it I would assume they got
| used to LTR.
|
| It feels like this would cause a lot of bugs because devs aren't
| prepared to handle vertical correctly.
|
| Vertical can be nice for poetry or prose but forms? I believe in
| Japan/China/Korea most signs, subtitles etc are LTR. Mongolian
| script is something else but it feels like bringing an antique
| custom to forcefully override some past Russian and Chinese
| imperial impact.
|
| I really don't want to sound ignorant or xenophobic and would
| like to hear from someone native to this.
| nkrisc wrote:
| In case anyone is wondering about Mongolian script, here's a
| good example: https://president.mn/mng/
| c-smile wrote:
| > past Russian ... imperial impact
|
| Not sure how "past Russian impact" is at all related to ttb
| writings ...
|
| Could you elaborate on that?
| morbicer wrote:
| I am not an expert but Mongolia was under heavy Soviet
| influence so they adopted Cyrillic alphabet
|
| After USSR dissolution there's an impulse to return to the
| traditional vertical script which is a bit impractical
| because compared to say Han it's not possible to write it
| horizontally.
|
| Wiki can tell it better than me
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mongolian_Cyrillic_alphabet
| om2 wrote:
| They use of horizontal layout is to some extent a chicken and
| egg problem, since support for vertical writing has been poor
| in many web browsers.
|
| Vertical writing is often used in books, however, including
| ePub books that are internally HTML. With good enough support,
| it would be pretty reasonable to do a vertical layout for a
| serious news site, and horizontal form controls in the middle
| of that would likely be out of place. Physical newspapers,
| magazines, books, and manga in Japan are predominantly
| vertical.
| anilakar wrote:
| Looks like they ninja edited the header picture. While the
| controls themselves were properly formatted, the Japanese text
| used normal horizontal left-to-right glyphs. Now four hours later
| they seem to be vertical as they should.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-03-22 23:02 UTC)