Re: modal dialogs/overlays/lighboxes

I can't explain why other people are emulating dialogs with javascript
instead of using window.showModalDialog, but these are just some of the
issues that I remember right now:

At first it was IE only, so there was a need to emulate it for other
browsers.
According to the spec text itself, the dialog might fail due to popup
blockers
Just yesterday I was asked about a page where that call was used to launch a
PDF, but the dialog was empty. Changing to a plain window.open or
target="_blank" made it work.
In general: the execution of code and loading of pages inside the dialog is
very restricted in IE. There are simple things that work, but you can't get
the same flexibility and power than a normal window or div, so there's no
sense about trying to use it when "normal" things (like linking to a pdf)
fail.

Of course, other people will have other reasons to use/don't use it. Those
are the ones that makes me not interested about it.


2011/6/24 Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com>

> hi ted,
>
> here are some more 'real world' examples
>
> press the  check status or apply now buttons
> http://store.apple.com/us/instant_credit?mco=MTY4Njc5MDI
>
> press the 'View iPad Engraving Gallery' or 'View iPod Engraving Gallery'
> links
>
> http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/ipod/editorial/engraving_giftwrap?mco=MTM3NjM2MDQ
>
> press the 'view the app gallery' link
> http://store.apple.com/us?mco=Nzc1MjMwNA
>
> anyone with a twitter account press 'reply' to a tweet link or the
> 'retweet' link
> http://twitter.com/
>
> Even though the amny of previous links I provided were to demos of
> components form javscript libraries or standalone widgets, I suggest they
> should not be dismissed as the mechanisms they use to provide the features
> are representative of the way developers produce such features. And the
> dialog type components are used out of the box by web application
> developers.
>
> I would also suggest looking at why the currently defined
> window.showmodaldialog()
> http://dev.w3.org/html5/spec/timers.html#dom-showmodaldialog
> is not used by developers instead of the fake dialogs.
>
> regards
> stevef
>
>
>
>
> On 16 June 2011 10:02, Steve Faulkner <faulkner.steve@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi guys,
>> read you comments on IRC (
>> http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110616#l-148)
>>
>> "<hober> Hixie: I think stev'e content attribute is totally broken"
>>
>> Please improve/fix I don't much care for the specifics as long as it fixes
>> the brokenness of the many current attempts to fake UI widgets.
>>
>> "<hober> I'm leaning toward writing a zero-edit CP that says basically
>> "there are valid use cases, but the other CP's proposal is woefully
>> underspecified and broken, and to do it right would require a lot of work.
>> let's punt until html.next"
>>
>> the reason the CP arose was to get the feature in the spec spec sooner
>> rather than at some unspecified point in the future, as from my experience
>> reveiwing web apps on a daily basis, its a ubiquitous design pattern that
>> provides accessibility issues due to developers not bothering to provide
>> keyboard access or providing incorrect keyboard access or the keyboard
>> access not working across browsers...
>>
>> "<Hixie> i plan to be doing something along those lines in the coming
>> weeks"
>>
>> great to hear
>>
>> "# <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110616#l-162> [01:47]
>> <Hixie> hober: i expect we can probably do something pretty simple that hits
>> the majority of use cases
>> # <http://krijnhoetmer.nl/irc-logs/whatwg/20110616#l-163> [01:47] <Hixie>
>> hober: but first i need to figure out what the use cases are :-)"
>>
>>
>> below are some examples: of dialog/overlay/lighbox widgets:
>> http://flowplayer.org/tools/overlay/index.html
>> http://alloy.liferay.com/deploy/demos/dialog/
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/glow/docs/1.5/furtherinfo/widgets/overlay/
>> http://rightjs.org/ui/dialog/demo
>> http://jqueryui.com/demos/dialog/
>>
>> http://download.dojotoolkit.org/release-0.4.2/dojo-0.4.2p1-widget/tests/widget/test_Dialog.html
>> http://www.sencha.com/examples/pages/window/hello.html
>> http://www.sencha.com/examples/pages/window/dialog.html
>> http://www.sencha.com/examples/pages/window/accordion.html
>> http://dev.sencha.com/deploy/ext-4.0.2a/examples/window/window.html
>> http://leandrovieira.com/projects/jquery/lightbox/
>> http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox/
>> http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/examples/container/panel.html
>> http://reghellin.com/milkbox/
>> http://bertramakers.com/moolabs/imagezoom.php
>> http://www.aryweb.nl/projects/MooDialog/
>>
>> --
>> with regards
>>
>> Steve Faulkner
>> Technical Director - TPG
>>
>> www.paciellogroup.com | www.HTML5accessibility.com |
>> www.twitter.com/stevefaulkner
>> HTML5: Techniques for providing useful text alternatives -
>> dev.w3.org/html5/alt-techniques/
>> Web Accessibility Toolbar - www.paciellogroup.com/resources/wat-ie-about.html
>>
>>
>>
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