Affects: IE5, IE5.5, IE6, IE7, IE8, IE9 PP1, IE9 PP2, IE9 PP3, IE9 PP4, IE9 RC 1
Note this issue affects all versions of IE, but any version of IE below 5 is ignored.
Status: Microsoft has confirmed this will NOT be fixed in IE8 RTM
MSIE Feedback ID: 333954
The JavaScript prompt() method has been in Web Browsers that support JavaScript since day 1. The concept is simple. Provide a modal dialog, that displays a message, and allows the user to input a value.
Example: (from Firefox)
You've seen a "prompt" dialog of one kind or another in almost every windowed computer application in existance. It is by far, the easiest way to "halt" current activities, and ask the user for a value.
Unfortunately, this dialog, the "3rd trickiest" of the (only 3) available JavaScript dialogs in the web browser, is horribly broken... in fact, it hasn't even been patched once since its original design, made available in 1995! (That's 12 years ago for those without calculators!)
So, how is it broken?
- Display position is wrong, and awkward
- Button display is inconsistant with other dialogs
- The text input box is extremely large (redundanly so)
- The dialog does not scale
- The message in the dialog gets truncated
- The dialog does not declare the hostname of the site that launched it
- Did we mention that it is ugly?
- Whats with the title and the "script prompt" line?
- Where is the icon for this message box?
- Oh, and it doesn't handle DBCS (Double Byte Character Sets)
- (bug 139) - It doesn't center on the browser window
Try it yourself! Create new folder
Compare it with the alert() and confirm() dialogs
Now lets take a look at each of those closely:
1 Display Position
If every other utility dialog appears nicely centered in the browser display, why does the prompt dialog appear about 50px from the top left corner of the screen? How is this consistant? Would this not likely cover the most important content on the screen below, such that the first thing a user would need to do is move it to see what the prompt is related to?
2 Button Display
What is with the odd right-aligned stacked OK/Cancel buttons? Is this typically used anywhere else in Windows? No! So why does this dialog need to differ? What happened to consistancy for the user?
3 Text Input Box Size
Are users expected to write a novel in this dialog? What if the prompt is "How many books would you like to order?" This input suggests that only numbers in the {Seventy trillion billion...} are expected. We don't think that the text box should be small, but this box is like 1/3 to 1/2 the screen size!
4 Dialog does not scale
If you have a large message, the dialog doesn't stretch to accomodate it, like the alert() or confirm() dialogs do. Considering that scaling was implemented for these 2 dialogs, would it not have occured as an important consideration when designing the prompt dialog?
5 Hostname not declared
This is a new feature of modern web browsers, designed to help alert users to any odd XSS (Cross Site Scripting) hacks that might get them to divulge sensitive information. AFAIK, Opera was the first to have this, with Mozilla Firefox following suit. Developers were quite confused when IE7 shipped without adding this simple security feature.
6 The message in the dialog gets truncated
This (due in part because of #4 above) is the biggest issue. Presenting any message other than "How many", or "What is your name" requires some thought because if your message is anything longer than a quick sentence, the content will get truncated!
7 Ugly. Just plain ugly
Normally a feature being ugly doesn't count as a bug, but in this case I disagree. Since the dialog does look ugly, and has not changed in 12 years, it highlights that this browser (now in version 7) hasn't been given the attention it needs and is not up to par with modern browsers.
8 Title / message
Why is the title "Explorer User Prompt" instead of "Microsoft Internet Explorer"?
What is the "Script Prompt" all about?
This dialog is not very user friendly.
9 Missing message box icon
Standard message boxes (mini dialogs) like this in Windows have an icon. The .alert() dialog has an exclamation icon, the .confirm() dialog has a question mark icon etc. So where is the question mark icon for the prompt dialog?
Sample dialogs:
10 No support for DBCS (Double Byte Character Sets
You can see this article on MSDN for more details, but there is no realistic workaround available.
As Web Developers build their sites and applications (which are getting more and more complex) it never ceases to amaze them that such a simple borwser feature has been given such neglect.
Example:
<script type="text/javascript">
prompt('You need to enter a name for this new mailbox.\n' +
'Please ensure that it does not contain spaces quotes or the percent symbol.\n' +
'You can change the name at a later time if desired.','Friends');
</script>
Known Workarounds: None. You can attempt to simulate a dialog, for user input using floating elements above the page, however you will need to build the entire "dialog" and will have to add code to enable draging etc.
Related Issues: None.
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