Re: [w3c/webcomponents] Mechanism for setting the tabindex focus flag without sprouting tabindex attribute? (#762)

We discussed this at this week's [web component meeting](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1QTcATefkEzUIsmE3xLXb5oDuom4BNCknXiYXpBNhzjQ/edit#).

@rniwa put forth an update to Apple's tri-state proposal referenced in his summary above. In this, `elementInternals` would have a `focusMode` property with three values:
1. "none" (not focusable)
2. A value indicating that the element is focusable and edits text
3. A value indicating that element is focusable but does not edit text

The difference between #2 and #3 would let Safari provide its distinct UI behavior in which focus skips components in category #3 by default.

Various people expressed questions about how developers would distinguish themselves between categories #2 and #3, particularly for new types of components that have no analogues among the existing HTML elements. One class of components are list boxes and other elements that support typeahead (type some characters to select an item that begins with those characters). Do those components edit text?

Given that Apple is the entity making the distinction, the suggestion was that Apple provide guidelines about how it would categorize various categories of elements whose focusability might conceivably be in question. Those guidelines could then be incorporated into the documentation of the `focusMode` enum so that developers could make a reasonable determination on their own as to which value best reflected the component's use.

One concern raised with this proposal is that, by default, WebKit does not focus components in category #2 — e.g., form controls like radio buttons — when the user clicks on them. That behavior might confuse or cause problems for a web developer using that #2 `focusMode` value for their component.

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Received on Thursday, 17 September 2020 21:21:55 UTC