Validate client-side with dataset property

There are many new and exciting things in HTML5, but one of the interesting shifts it has made in my programming is for client-side form validation using the new dataset property. This was also possible pre-HTML5 via the getAttribute() method.

The code below will first try to use the new dataset property. If that fails it will fallback to trying the getAttribute() method. This ensures that all browsers will behave the same regardless of their support for HTML5. And for good measure there is another fallback to a very generic message.

To take this a step further, you could use a dynamic programming language like ColdFusion to dynamically inject the message. You could even have it display a language-specific message (i.e., English, Spanish, etc.).