input[type=checkbox] and Form.Element#getValue

I thought about it designing the method and here is the thing.

There might be several checkboxes and everyone of them will have different value. So we need that method, to return correct value of the checkbox, whether it checked or not, coz there are cases when you need the actual value regardless it's state.

But your case have makes sense as well, and here is how you can deal with that. There is a form method called #values that returns a hash of the form values. That method filters out all the disabled and unchecked radio/checkbox inputs. So if you need the actual value that the form will send, you can do that kinda like that

var value = $('my-input').form.values()['the_name'];

if it's too long and ugly you always can define your own method for your application

Yeah, I'm using something like that already, I just thought, maybe it would be a good idea to make the getValue() method act like this, but I see why that's not ideal either.