Re: Interaction with invisible elements

better late than never  ....

Eric Meyer wrote:
> 
> At 22:50 -0800 3/4/01, Ian Hickson wrote:
> 
> >Mozilla treats elements that are 'visibility: hidden' as if they were not
> >available for user interaction because it is very bad UI to have invisible
> >elements react to the user. We decided that good UI was overall a better
> >aim than the few edge cases. ;-)

Please describe the operation of a client side imagemap, which as far as I
can see are a bunch of invisible shapes drawn on top of an image and
receiving events.

>     An interesting assertion.  Why is it bad UI?  I can think of at
> least a few cases where you might want to have invisible elements
> that can react to the user's input.

Right.

>     Actually, my investment in this issue is not to have invisible
> elements available for interaction (although I think that would be
> cool) so much as it is to get the specification clarified either in
> the CSS2 errata or in the appropriate module(s) of CSS3.  Just a
> single sentence is all I ask, really, which says whether or not
> invisible elements are available for interaction. 

Yes, they are.

> If they aren't,
> then add another sentence that defines the point at which semi-opaque
> elements become (un)available for interaction.

Exactly.... having invisible elements behaving differently from elements
that are effectively invisible (0.2% opacity) is just plain wierd. Ideally
the author should have control over this.

-- 
Chris

Received on Monday, 26 March 2001 18:20:23 UTC