[TYPO3-dev] Removal of "checkbox" configuration from input type?

[Christian Zenker]

On Wed, 16 Mar 2011 13:11:13 +0100, Jigal van Hemert <jigal at xs4all.nl>  
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On 16-3-2011 12:26, Christian Zenker wrote:
>> Short version: Was the configuration "checkbox" thought to be removed
>> from the configuration of input-types in TYPO3 4.5 or should it still  
>> work?
>
> AFAIK the option is not functional any more. All input boxes have a  
> clear button inside the box when they contain any input and all  
> date/time fields have a calendar popup.
>
>> But I'm uncertain if I should file a bug report and a patch, because bug
>> report #17680 (http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=17680) states that the
>> checkbox configuration was obsolete since TYPO3 4.5. On the other hand,
>> TYPO3 4.5 was designed to be backwards compatible and I would not see
>> why such a rather simple feature would have been removed without a
>> proper substitution.
>
> Every 'major' version (version 5 is reserved for TYPO3 Phoenix, so 4.4,  
> 4.5, etc. are 'major' versions in the 4 line) is as much as possible  
> backwards compatible. There are always some changes which can lead to  
> problems and inconsistencies.
>
> The checkbox was really bad from a usability point of view. Most people  
> didn't understand it at all and of the ones who knew that you could  
> 'uncheck' it to clear the field hardly anybody knew that 'checking' the  
> field would fill the input box with the value defined with that option.

Hi Jigal.

Thanks for your response.

Replacing the checkbox with a clear button is a nice move in principle.  
And after rethinking I guess, my problem isn't really with the checkbox  
but with the behavior of the clear button. So my question is actually a  
little different: Is it intentional that the clear button just clears the  
input field and does not set the default value? :)

Here is what I was doing:
I've built a calendar extension on extbase[1]. Each event has 4 fields for  
start day, start time, end date and end time. The idea is to create allday  
events or events you don't know how long they take by just omitting the  
corresponding fields. So you could uncheck the checkbox in front of the  
end time to state that you don't know the end time anymore. The clear  
button works a little different now by just clearing the field. And here  
is the twist: This sets a time field to "00:00". But to make "midnight"  
and "no value entered" distinctive, I used "-1" as some kind of NULL  
value. This was also set as default in TCA. TYPO3 4.4 handles this  
correctly, but TYPO3 4.5 does not.

I've dug into the code a little, and I think I might get this handled by a  
hook.
Nonetheless it seems there is a bug in JS that prevents "0:00" from  
showing up in a form field, but I'll file that separately in the bug  
tracker.



[1] http://forge.typo3.org/projects/extension-cz_simple_cal,  
https://github.com/czenker/cz_simple_cal