Contextual keyboard for online forms

[clawanhex]

Hi, sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but I wasn't really sure where to put it.

I remember when SJ first intro'd the iPhone, he made a big thing of how the iPhone would give you a context-specific keyboard, eg a numeric keypad for a calculator, a keyboard with web-specific characters in Safari, the @ in an email app etc etc.

One of the areas this would be really useful would be in online forms in Mobile Safari. For example, if I need to enter my email address, it would be nice to have email specific characters, rather than a generic QWERTY keyboard. For a number, it would be nice just to get a big keypad.

I don't know if this stuff is technically possible, or if it needs web developers to do something at their end, or whether Apple chooses not to do it for some reason.

Does anyone know of a hack/kludge that would get this behaviour, or is it just impossible? Thanks,

AC

 

[STEVESKI07]

For this to happen, Apple would have to put some code in that checks meta tags looking for certain keys such as "forum". If that was implemented, all the forums would have to add this certain meta tag to their mobile site so the iPhone can read it.

To answer your questions...yes, it is possible to be implemented, but no, it is not currently implemented and I don't ever see it being implemented either.


Edit: I read your post too quickly and thought you were talking about online "forums" and not online "forms". Either way I think my post holds some validity and the concept is still the same, so hopefully it still answers your question.

 

[ckd]

One of the areas this would be really useful would be in online forms in Mobile Safari. For example, if I need to enter my email address, it would be nice to have email specific characters, rather than a generic QWERTY keyboard. For a number, it would be nice just to get a big keypad.

I don't know if this stuff is technically possible, or if it needs web developers to do something at their end, or whether Apple chooses not to do it for some reason.

The web developer can do it by setting the "type" or "pattern" attributes on the INPUT tag, as described in this developer document.

You can control which type of keyboard is displayed when a user touches a text field in a web page. To display a telephone keypad, an email keyboard, or a URL keyboard, use the tel, email, or url keywords for the type attribute on an input element, respectively. To display a numeric keyboard, set the value of the pattern attribute to "[0-9]*" or "\d*".

These keywords and the pattern attribute are part of HTML 5, and are available in iPhone OS 3.1 and later.