On 17 Nov 2005, at 23:04, Christopher Lenz wrote:
I don't agree, at least for the common cases such as validating emails, URLs, date/time fields etc. It really shouldn't be necessary to call back to the server for trivial and/or common validation tasks.
I don't understand why not. It's hardly a performance burden (the amount of data being transferred is trivial) and it makes things on the client incredibly simple as the validation logic for one field (send to the server, see what it says) is reusable for every other field. Premature optimisation is the root of all evil.
If I get some spare time soon I think I'll build the Ajax-only validation thing as a proof of concept. I'm willing to bet that the performance difference between it and pure client-side validation will be imperceptible in most cases. If it's noticable and obvious that the user experience would be better with hybrid client-side/Ajax validation then I'll throw my support firmly behind that option.
