60205 - First radio option selected when no default in HTML

Status: VERIFIED INVALID

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, defect, P3)

Description

[Dave Pratt]

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux 2.2.13 i686; en-US; m18) Gecko/20001115
BuildID:    2000111508

My form relies on the user actively selecting one of two radio options (YES or
NO). Unfortunately Mozilla differs from Netscape/M$E in auto-selecting the first
option. I need the user and not Mozilla to actively do this.
If I want a default I can include one in the HTML

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. View the page
2.
3.

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

This only happens in strict mode (i.e. for XHTML, HTML 4.0 Strict, and HTML 4.0
Transitional with DTD).  In quirks mode (any other doctype) neither radio button
is selected.

This bug is invalid for reasons explained below:

The w3c spec (at http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/interact/forms.html#radio) quotes
from the HTML RFC (RFC 1866):

"At all times, exactly one of the radio buttons in a set is checked. If none of
the <INPUT> elements of a set of radio buttons specifies `CHECKED', then the
user agent must check the first radio button of the set initially."

The spec furthermore says that no current user agent actually follows the RFC
and that user agent behavior differs and therefore: "authors should ensure that
in each set of radio buttons that one is initially 'on'."

So Mozilla is rendering the document per spec in strict mode (your page is XHTML
1.0) and rendering compatibly with other browsers and NS 4.x in quirks mode.
This is exactly what Mozilla's behavior should be.

I would suggest either rewriting the page to not depend on the radio buttons not
being selected or changing the doctype to a quirks doctype.

Comment 2

[Eric Hodel]

verifying invalid

Comment 3

[John Morrison]

*** Bug 85089 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***