13 March 2007
The least useful of all the HTML Controls
I am sick, sick of <input type=”reset” />!
Just now, I was using PhpMyAdmin. It’s not the only application guilty of using reset. More do include it than not. Reset is a control and for some reason, people are driven to use it.
The trouble with it is that its a destructive control and not nearly annoying enough. When you click it, the browser should annoyingly prompt you for confirmation. Perhaps the button should be fuschia and deprive it of its ability to be styled. If its ugly enough, perhaps people will avoid using it, or even better, create a useful version of it tailored to their need. If it’s a cancel button, make it work like a cancel button. Defaulting fields is a useless operation.
This senseless need for an additional button must stop. GUI developers have learned through experience to offer only the functionality you need. You do not see reset buttons in real applications. Why? It’s a useless function. While the web is certainly a different platform than Windows or Mac and therefore has different conventions, reset is no more useful on the web than it would be in a normal application.