This is a bug. A bug in design, perhaps, but still a bug. A limitation, too, I imagine, that no one wants to step up and solve (myself included). But still a bug.

It's a limitation imposed by the design of HTML forms, which requires significant web-author effort to work around. It results in some very non-intuitive behaviour, and thus it's at the very least a bug in the design.

Is it worth it to fix? Probably not - almost every page you look at has multiple forms, and the state of other forms are not kept when submitting other forms. That's a lot to go through. But just because there has been, and continues to be, a conscious decision not to change the behaviour doesn't mean it's not a bug.

Sorry about the rant - but I have to deal with this line of thought at work, too, and it annoys me to no end. I have no problems with shipping bugs. As long as everyone acknowledges that's what we're doing. Call it a limitation - fine. But it's still a bug. A bug we may not want to pay to fix. But it's still a bug.

In reply to Re^2: Possible PM bug? by Tanktalus
in thread Possible PM bug? by NateTut

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.