I agree that it's a hack and I can't say that I like it. Blame the W3C and browser vendors for providing incomplete/barely functional standards like <dialog>.
Absolutely, and a ton of commenters (mostly on Reddit) seem to be missing that point. Use the right tool for the job. In the article I explicitly state that I couldn't have built the drag-and-drop invoice editor without JavaScript (although I wish that I could!).
Thank you! I had no idea that iOS required the pattern="\d" attribute. Those inputs require a decimal, so that pattern won't actually work (something like pattern="\d\.?\d*"). If I can get my hands on an iPhone to test that, I will deploy it shortly!
Definitely a few hacks involved. I’ve seen different combinations of using pattern, type=number, step=“0.01” etc, but you may need support for longer decimals in qty/price.
I’m always on the lookout for form best practices, but it’s definitely hard to stay up with all of the current trends.
There are a few mobile preview tools, not sure which is currently best, for testing on different virtual devices:
A lot of things are performed on the server, and then the server responds with a "flash" which is basically a little bar that says "Data saved." or "There was an error: ...".
There are a few places where I used a simple 5-liner to validate a field or something.
Unfortunately there was one place where I needed some heavier JS (for which I used Mithril.js), but it was absolutely required for when you're editing an invoice. You wouldn't want to edit line items and wait for a server response every time you make one change, so I simply determined that this was an area where I had no choice. Mithril simply modifies the DOM inside the <form> element, and then saving is a plain old POST request when you submit the form after you've made all of your changes.
The unfortunate reality is that I couldn't completely free myself from JavaScript, but got a lot closer.
Absolutely DO NOT use Flippa or BuySellEmpire. I made the terrible mistake of trying to use them. My experience was so bad I ended up saying "screw it" and never sold my product.
Cox is the worst. The prices magically increase every few months and it always takes a phone call to get them back down to what you originally thought they were.
I develop on a Lenovo IdeaPad 120S ($249 in 2018). The plastic body is of higher build quality than my last $600 aluminum Acer. The trick is to live with less software altogether. If you scoff at 4GB RAM and 1.10GHz Celeron, remember that it only took 64kb and 0.043MHz to get to the moon. If you scoff at that statement, re-evaluate your life. "It's the Indian, not the arrow."
