Re: [csswg-drafts] [css-forms-1] Define range slider datalist integration (#12963)

The CSS Working Group just discussed `[css-forms-1] Define range slider datalist integration`.

<details><summary>The full IRC log of that discussion</summary>
&lt;bramus> lwarlow: css forms is a WIP spec to make form controls stylable<br>
&lt;bramus> … with a special appearance mode<br>
&lt;bramus> … in l1 we focus on in-page controls, with exception of select<br>
&lt;bramus> … other pickers are out of scope in L1<br>
&lt;bramus> … there is 1 case where datalist have impact on the page rendering control, which is with the range input<br>
&lt;bramus> … you can give the datalist a list of options to render the ticks along the slider track<br>
&lt;bramus> … that is sth we have not specified yet<br>
&lt;bramus> … on top of that it is mentioned in the HTML spec (but ont implemented anywhere AFAIK), optoins can contain text or have a label attribute<br>
&lt;bramus> … is not used when rendering those ticks, but not uncommon to have labeled ticks<br>
&lt;bramus> … if we could come up with a way to do that<br>
&lt;bramus> … there is an idea in the Open UI enhanced range, that we have new pseudos<br>
&lt;astearns> ack lwarlow<br>
&lt;bramus> … ::slider-tick and ::slider-tick-label<br>
&lt;bramus> … havent discussed or integrated any of that<br>
&lt;bramus> … but are potential ways to do this<br>
&lt;bramus> … could be functional pseudos to take an index<br>
&lt;bramus> … wanna see what ppl think here<br>
&lt;astearns> ack dbaron<br>
&lt;bramus> dbaron: historical tihng about label and option<br>
&lt;bramus> … believe label attr on option was introduced as the same time as the optgroup element<br>
&lt;bramus> … designed as ??? and label would be used in optgroup supported browsers<br>
&lt;bramus> … a later spec change might have messed up that logic<br>
&lt;bramus> astearns: other comments?<br>
&lt;bramus> lwarlow: if anyone knows a browser that has implemented the label, but AFAIK none do … but I assume the screenshots in the spec come from _somewhere_<br>
&lt;bramus> … thinking about how styling would work<br>
&lt;bramus> … I think the ticks are ??? in paint<br>
&lt;emilio> q+<br>
&lt;bramus> … would be curious to see how we render this with CSS concepts<br>
&lt;ntim> s/???/implemented<br>
&lt;bramus> ntim: yes, just a paint thing<br>
&lt;bramus> emilio: same in gecko<br>
&lt;bramus> … would probably, like not do this for the base apperance thing. need to define a very similar thing that mirrors the option text into the button of the select<br>
&lt;bramus> … could use some of that, but my guess is that its gonna be fairly annoying to both spec and implement … feels niche<br>
&lt;bramus> … never seen a slider use this<br>
&lt;bramus> fantasai: prbably because its not stylalbe right now<br>
&lt;bramus> ntim: ticks are not very informative right now. from a UX you cant see which values they correspond to, so thats why folks dont use them I think<br>
&lt;miriam> I use them, but agree they're pretty limited<br>
&lt;bramus> … curious what component authors do<br>
&lt;bramus> emilio: we should probably not block most of the slider on this<br>
&lt;bramus> … if we can do it in two steps<br>
&lt;bramus> … getting sliders interoperable seems more important than datalist<br>
&lt;miriam> q+<br>
&lt;Kurt> q+<br>
&lt;bramus> castastrophe: a tick can be valuable if there is a density of data, like label every 5th instead of every single tick. might still need the tick for all, but not a label for all<br>
&lt;astearns> ack emilio<br>
&lt;lwarlow> +1 to that<br>
&lt;bramus> … a dense amount of that could use a tick<br>
&lt;bramus> +1<br>
&lt;astearns> ack miriam<br>
&lt;bramus> miriam: I use these fairly regularly but they are limited becase you cant have a visual label and cant style them<br>
&lt;bramus> … would be useful to be able to do that<br>
&lt;lwarlow> q+<br>
&lt;bramus> … choosing between a select and range … like font-sizes, might have ratios that are popular to only label the popular values<br>
&lt;castastrophe> q+<br>
&lt;bramus> … or like zoom values: only label 100%, 200%, etc<br>
&lt;dbaron> s/designed as ??? and label/designed so non-optgroup supporting browsers would use the contents of the option element and label/<br>
&lt;bramus> … or if you want the starting point to be marked, not the rest<br>
&lt;bramus> … i.e. putting a mark where the range defaults<br>
&lt;bramus> … would be super useful if we could label and style<br>
&lt;astearns> ack Kurt<br>
&lt;bramus> Kurt: are these labels relative to the max attr value?<br>
&lt;bramus> lwarlow: if you have options that … my hunch would be that they are absolute values, and ticks above the max dont get rendered<br>
&lt;bramus> … not sure if when the max changes ???<br>
&lt;bramus> Kurt: just changes the value.<br>
&lt;bramus> … considering how the max scales thigs<br>
&lt;lwarlow> There's examples at https://brechtdr.github.io/enhanced-range-slider-poc/ fwiw mostly around multi range but some still apply.<br>
&lt;bramus> … I know animations  have percentages in their keyframes<br>
&lt;bramus> … could use inspiration from there<br>
&lt;bramus> … see how min/max impact those<br>
&lt;astearns> ack lwarlow<br>
&lt;bramus> lwarlow: regarding use-cases, here are some that Brecht has put together<br>
&lt;bramus> … (see link)<br>
&lt;bramus> … one of them is opening hours for example, or time-based stuff<br>
&lt;bramus> … or if you have a set of values (1-5-10-50-100)<br>
&lt;bramus> … the questions on what these values represent are things to think about<br>
&lt;bramus> … maybe some existing implementations can be used<br>
&lt;astearns> ack castastrophe<br>
&lt;bramus> castastrophe: two thoughts<br>
&lt;iank_> How do I get in the building?<br>
&lt;bramus> … 1. hear what emilio is saying to not block progress<br>
&lt;bramus> … but from designer standpoint, the ability to style the ticks and labels, I might have to redesign the thing … pass the data to the semantic one. withou tstyling of the more specific features its not gonna be as usable<br>
&lt;bramus> … users might skip it entirely then<br>
&lt;bramus> … 2. I like the datalist aproach, but dont think it scales well … translations and i18n … the value would need to be assigned to languages or abstracted to be more like how JS processes numbers.<br>
&lt;bramus> … like “I want to represent this as currency”<br>
&lt;bramus> … otherwise you need mutliple datalists … having some logic that replaces the datalist based on language<br>
&lt;bramus> … the more common use-cases would be representing numbers as currency, fractions, whole numbers, …<br>
&lt;bramus> … if we could make that translatable, this would scale bettter<br>
&lt;lwarlow> That's a very good point.<br>
&lt;bramus> astearns: thanks for the input, and lets continue working on it in the issue<br>
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Received on Tuesday, 27 January 2026 17:10:40 UTC