Primary eng/PM emails
Eng: yoi...@chromium.org, ko...@chromium.org PM: kenji...@chromium.org
Spec
http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/master/forms.html#input-modalities:-the-inputmode-attribute
Summary
The inputmode content attribute is an enumerated attribute that specifies what kind of input mechanism would be most helpful for users entering content into the text form control.
Motivation
This attribute helps setting the default input modality as a hint, so users can save some operation to change the mode manually or indicate the behavior of the input field against typed characters, e.g. for “varbatim”, any spelling correction or typing suggestion should be disabled.
Compatibility Risk
The spec is still being discussed. Currently, IE10 appears to have some implementation (see demo at http://olav.dk/wf2/demo/inputmode.asp). Firefox implemented it as x-inputmode due to some incompatibilities with the latest spec. However, the behind the flag implementation can adapt as the spec evolves.
Ongoing technical constraints
As some of the mode (“katakana” for example) may not be selected using the APIs provided by system (on Linux, for example), fallback mode in the spec should be refined.
Will this feature be supported on all five Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Chrome OS and Android)?
Yes. Some of the modes may not be available on some platform, but as the spec says “User agents must recognise all the keywords and corresponding states given below, but need not support all of the corresponding states. If a keyword's state is not supported, the user agent must act as if the keyword instead mapped to the given state's fallback state,” it is not an issue here.
OWP launch tracking bug?
Row on feature dashboard?
Yes.
Requesting approval to ship?
No.