Re: ISSUE-133 modal-attribute - Chairs Solicit Alternate Proposals or Counter-Proposals

Hi,

> Can you please give insight, even in general terms, as to what is
> wrong with the current change proposal?

Sure. Just some things off the top of my head:

* The CP as drafted doesn't provide implementers with anywhere near the
  level of detail needed to produce interoperable implementations. For
  example, what happens (to input events, to the a11y layer mapping,
  etc.) when multiple elements have modal="" specified?

* Authors generally turn modals on and off via script, so why have a
  content attribute at all? It's much less cumbersome to have some kind
  of direct JS API.

* Existing implementations of modals in the wild usually provide a
  mechanism for the author to shade or otherwise style the areas of the
  page outside of the modal.

I'm sure that we could quickly throw together something that fixed the
above problems with the existing CP, but we shouldn't be quickly
throwing together APIs that we intend to expose to the Web. They should
be designed carefully to address use cases, and that takes time.


Ted

Received on Thursday, 23 June 2011 17:01:22 UTC