Validation Options - Statement of Direction

Hi Mike,

I think issues around this topic fall under one of the following categories:

1. The developer found a solution for his problem(bug) and did not update the thread
2. The developer decided to take another approach (maybe our recommendation maybe some other approach)
3. The conversation moved to private emails and the thread was never updated
4. The developer didn't find a solution and the issue fell through the cracks

My personal opinion is that forcing users to not leave a field is not the best way to build a web application. It is a relic of an old paradigm (client/server applications). There is almost always a better, nicer way to enforce rules. Very few, if any, large Formspider implementations use this approach (that I know of).

We certainly don't want to force people to build applications one way. So if there is an issue around this, we'll be happy to fix it.

However, Formspider developers should keep in mind that, if they do such a validation and not allow the user to leave a field, this will require a roundtrip back to the server. If you do this field by field, the user experience will suffer. There is very little, if anything at all, we can do about this. We can't change the law of physics.

Even if you enforce users to stay in a field via a client side validation, this client side validation is by definition not secure, because it is a client side validation. So you cannot rely on it. You will have to revalidate the entry before you process it anyway. Otherwise, it's basically not a validation but a security hole. So why bother with keeping people stuck in the first place? :-)

This is what worries me most I guess. Developers writing client side validation routines that perform well but don't have corresponding server side validation.

Hope this helps.

Kind Regards,
Yalim