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Comment by city41 | Hacker News Reader

I now will need to do even further work to see if I am working with a browser that supports the input type, and then provide a fallback if not. Since there is no way all my users will have an HTML5 capable browser (I'm looking at you IE), I will always need the fallback; so why not just use the fallback always for more consistency and simpler code? On the server side I have to validate all the input anyway, regardless of what the client side control is promising to do for me.

With the date input type, don't my non HTML5 using visitors have to enter a string that will match what an HTML5 browser would send me? Otherwise I'll have to deal with two different date formats. I hope HTML5's spec decided on a clean, simple date format that is easy to type.

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But now there's a standard. jQuery will (most likely) support this, as will any other javascript library. Just include one file (that you're probably including anyway) and you're good to go. The cool thing is that now people with HTML5 browsers will have access to plugins that can extend the behaviour of these fields.

One plugin I'm missing, that this makes possible, is adding a "recent dates" box to the date-selector: when planning a vacation, I need to enter the same two dates (often 4-6 months in the future) on the websites of airlines, hotels, car rentals etc. over and over. That gets old really fast.

I hope HTML5's spec decided on a clean, simple date format that is easy to type.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339#section-5.6

They would either have to type the date input or you could have a fallback date picker using jQuery (or whatever framework) that produces the same format as the built-in date picker.

"Since there is no way all my users will have an HTML5 capable browser (I'm looking at you IE)"

Do you not think that IE will support HTML5 by the time the W3C makes it a proper Recommendation?

Microsoft seems to have picked up again on supporting such things, so it may happen, given how long it may be before HTML5 gets the W3C nod.

Yeah but that's neither here nor there. HTML5 will be used quite a bit before it becomes official, it already has. So really the official nod just doesn't mean much. IE is the (really) long pole here.

I get that, but the trouble is that it sounds very much like the stance Microsoft has taken, which is that since they have 90% (or whatever) share of the market, they are the de facto standard so others should get in line with what they do.

And the counter argument had been, no, browsers need to follow formally recognized standard, specifically what the W3C endorses. What's funny is ti see that toss aside now that it has become practical to ignore the W3C.

I expect HTML5 to become a W3C rec at some point, and Microsoft to follow along, but it still seems hollow for people to complain that Microsoft is not be so anxious to jump on an HTML5 implementation.

Oh sure, technically Microsoft isn't doing anything wrong. So we technically can't hold it against them. But the reality is they are holding back progress on HTML5, and it's no coincidence that that just happens to benefit them.

But, they may need to change their tune sooner than they'd like. Their marketshare is actually down to about 65%, and Firefox and Chrome gain new marketshare every day. HTML5 is very much in Google's interest, and they have the resources to influence things in that direction. I think the Chrome tv ads are just the beginning here.

Even if IE9 supports it, there will be people unable to upgrade.

You can ignore them though, as their numbers continue to dwindle.

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