HTML5 - Part 2

date time Input Type: HTML5

Today lets learn some very important input types of HTML5:

datetime
datetime-local
date
time
week
month

datetime input type is supported by Opera browser, but as of now(2013), Google Chrome doesn’t support it. All other input date time related input types are supported by Google Chrome.

HTML file: month input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="month" min="2013-01" max="2013-09"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have a month type input field which has a minimum allowed month as 2013-01 and a maximum allowed month as 2013-09.

HTML file: date input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="date"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have a date input type, which shows a date picker in the UI.

HTML file: time input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="time"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have a time input type, we could even specify the fractional seconds. Look for the syntax at the end of this post.

HTML file: datetime input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="datetime"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

datetime input type which signifies Universal Time Convention(UTC).

HTML file: datetime-local input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="datetime-local"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have a datetime-local input type, which takes the input based on the local time zone of the user’s machine.

HTML file: week input type
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>date picker: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="dt">Date: </label>
 <input name="dt" type="week"/>
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

week input type gives date picker UI and allows user to select the entire date.

Form Input Type – date time: HTML5

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKRuSryBaNk]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKRuSryBaNk [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note:
We can specify value, min, max and step attributes for all these input types. And the format for it is as shown below:

date YYYY-MM-DD default step 60 seconds

time HH:MM:SS.FF default step 1 Day (SS.FF means seconds and fractional seconds)

datetime YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.FFZ default step 60 seconds (T and Z means the TimeZone, these alphabets/characters must be literally present in the format)

datetime-local YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.FF default step 60 seconds (albhabet/character/letter T must be literally present in the format)

week YYYY-WNN default step of 1 week (letter W means the week, this alphabet/characters must be literally present in the format)

month YYYY-MM default step of 1 month

range Input Type: HTML5

Browsers which support range input type know that the field is used for entering a number with in a given range.

User Interface(UI) enhancement wise, you may get a slider control to select a range of number. You can even use min, max and step attributes to provide additional control for the field – for setting the range.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>range Input Type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
<script src="myScript.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label>Range(2 to 10): </label>
 <input type="range" min="2" max="10" id="get" step="0.2" onchange="fetch()"/>
 <input type="number" min="2" max="10" step="0.2" id="put" />
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have 2 input fields of type range and number respectively. Both having minimum allowed value as 2 and maximum allowed value as 10, and a step of 0.2 (fractional value). The number input field is taken for the sake of illustrating the value selected by the user using the range input field – by using(sliding) the slider.

JavaScript file
myScript.js

function fetch()
{
var get  = document.getElementById("get").value;
document.getElementById("put").value = get;
}

Here we fetch the value selected by the user using the slider and assign the value to the number input field.

CSS file associated with this is same as present at pattern and title Attribute of Form Field: HTML5

Form Input Type – range: HTML5

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YecwKiFBt0s]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YecwKiFBt0s [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note: Browsers which do not support range input type, simply fall back to text input type. However, you need to validate the user entered data at server-side for more security. Client side validation is done mainly for the sake of creating the illustration of speed of validating the data and for a better user experience.

Tel Input Type: HTML5

Lets look at tel Input Type of HTML5 forms.

In this video, I’ll show you that there are no interface changes to tel type input fields. And there are no actual behavioural changes too.

Only advantages, as for now, with tel type input fields are:
1. Screen readers pickup these tel type input fields and hint the visually challenged people that they need to enter their telephone number in the input field.
2. Mobile device browsers which are optimized to work for HTML5, will show up a customized keyboard to the user to enter telephone number rather than the regular text based keyboard.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>tel Input Field: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label>Text:</label>
<input type="text"/><br />
<label>Tel:</label>
<input type="tel"/><br />
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have 2 input fields of type text and tel respectively. Both these have similar visual appearance, and behave much the same on our regular computer browsers.

CSS file associated with this is same as present at pattern and title Attribute of Form Field: HTML5

Form Input Type – tel: HTML5

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcnNuyqLY44]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcnNuyqLY44 [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note: tel type input fields do not validate the user input to check if she entered a telephone number or a random text. Because a telephone number has a wide range of acceptance – like including a hyphen or the number of digits in a phone number vary etc..

URL Input Type: HTML5

Lets look at URL Input Type of HTML5 forms.

In this video, we illustrate how you can implement simple URL validation using url input type.

Source Code: HTML file

index.html

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>URL Input Type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
 <label for="uri">URL: </label>
<input type="url"/>
<input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Simple url type input field checks for the presence of http:// followed by some domain name, dot and a valid TLD(Top Level Domain) name.

Video Tutorial: Form Input Type – url: HTML5

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnVK7jecJ0o]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnVK7jecJ0o [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note:
It doesn’t ping the entered URL to check if the URL is actually present or not. It simply checks to make sure the user entered information starts with http:// and ends with a dot followed by a valid TLD.

If viewed on a HTML5 compatible mobile browser, it pops up custom keyboard to facilitate the user to enter URL.

Email Input Type: HTML5

Lets look at email input type of HTML5 forms.

In this video, we illustrate how you can implement simple email validation using email input type.

HTML file
index.html

< !DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>Email input type: HTML5</title>
<link href="myStyle.css" rel="stylesheet" />
</head>
<body>
 
<form>
<label for="mail">Email: </label>
 <input type="email"/><br />
 <input type="submit"/>
</form>
 
</body>
</html>

Here we have an input field of type email. We haven’t implemented complicated JavaScript to check if the entered text actually contains a @ symbol and a valid TLD. email input type checks for all these small requirements to pass it as an email address.

Form Input Type – email: HTML5

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxMBsVw8LXw]

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxMBsVw8LXw [Watch the Video In Full Screen.]

Note:
It doesn’t validate the email address completely. Infact, it doesn’t check if the entered email address is actually a real email address or a dummy one. It simply checks for minimal thing in the entered text to determine if it is an email address or not – like @ symbol and a valid TLD(Top Level Domain) extension.

Also on mobile devices, when it encounters these email input type, user is prompted with keypad that aids in entering email address – like the @ symbol present on the same screen and need not to navigate to special symbols section on the keypad.