Disabling user focus for an entire section (Was: Spec does not appear to define what it means to be a "modal" dialog (e.g. focus concerns should be included))

On a related note, this does not cover where you want to mark an entire section as "disabled" (e.g. don't focus anything in this section) without disabling other sections of the page. 

For example, in carousels, you may want to leave side panel contents partially visible (a common visual effect) but prevent users from tabbing directly to the inactive content, but you would not want the frontmost carousel panel to be "modal" as this would prevent interaction and focus elsewhere in the document. Currently, you have to loop through all focusable descendants of the inactive panel, store their current tabindex value, and set the new tabindex value to -1. There should be a better way to do this. We could potentially increase the scope of the disabled attribute to apply to containers, or perhaps have a new tabindex value ("-2"?) that overrides the tabindex for descendant nodes.

James


On Nov 8, 2012, at 12:48 PM, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:

> One clarification inline.
> 
> On Nov 8, 2012, at 12:46 PM, James Craig <jcraig@apple.com> wrote:
> 
>> I don't see a definition for "modal" in the spec section for the dialog element.
>> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec-preview/commands.html#the-dialog-element
>> 
>> Presumably dialog.showModal() would prevent interaction
> 
> In case it's not clear, I should clarify I meant prevent interaction *of background contents* not of content inside the dialog.
> 
>> in any modality (including keyboard focusability), but as far as I can see, it does not state anything to that effect. Unless I hear a correction, I'll file a defect.
>> 
>> 
>> 
> 
>

Received on Thursday, 8 November 2012 20:56:28 UTC