- From: Fred Andrews <fredandw@live.com>
- Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 12:01:27 +0000
- To: "whatwg@whatwg.org" <whatwg@whatwg.org>
Dear Ian, Thank you opening a discussion about these interactive elements. It would be disappointing to see these abandoned, for those who would like to see more interactive non-javascript content. I would note that CSS alone is able to implement styled menus but only for 'hover to activate' and not for 'click to activate'. Might there be an alternative approach using a 'click to toggle' property on elements that might allow CSS alone to implement click activated menus etc? cheers Fred > Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2012 00:12:08 +0000 > From: ian@hixie.ch > To: whatwg@whatwg.org > CC: jackalmage@gmail.com; dglazkov@chromium.org; tkent@chromium.org; rniwa@webkit.org; eoconnor@apple.com; koivisto@iki.fi; jan.varga@gmail.com; adele@apple.com; jonlee@apple.com; simonp@opera.com; hsivonen@iki.fi; jgraham@opera.com; mounir@lamouri.fr; jonas@sicking.cc; ojan@chromium.org > Subject: [whatwg] Menus and Toolbars > > > (If you're cc'ed, your opinion likely affects implementations of this and > so your input is especially requested. See the question at the end. If you > reply to this, please strip the cc list as the mailing list software will > otherwise block your post for having too many cc's. Thanks.) > > There's a big section in the spec that tries to do three things: > > * context menus > * toolbars > * menu buttons > > Right now it's not implemented by anyone, though Firefox has a variant. > > http://whatwg.org/html/#the-menu-element > > This section has two big problems: > > 1. Styling of toolbars and menu buttons is just not defined. > > Toolbars could be a purely stylistic issue, to be solved either excluively > by CSS, or CSS plus a component/widget binding model (whatever solution we > end up with for that). > > Menu buttons are a real widget, though, so we can't just leave them to CSS > styling of <div>s, there needs to be some real styling going on. Right > now, because of the algorithm mentioned in #2 below, this is very > complicated. I'll get back to this. > > (Styling for context menus is not a big deal, they just use native UI.) > > > 2. Nobody is implementing it, in particular, the algorithm that converts > HTML elements into a menu structure seems unpopular. > > Right now, the spec has this algorithm that defines how to map existing > HTML semantics to a context menu or menu button (or toolbar, though the > latter is less important if we move to a pure-CSS rendering model for > toolbars, since we'd just drop the algorithm for them then). > > The idea here is that you don't have to use JavaScript to replicate the > effects of existing semantics. For example, if you want a menu button > which acts as a navigation mechanism, you just put <a> elements in your > markup and they automatically get turned into menu items. > > There's also a generic <command> element for when you don't need an > existing element to be used. Firefox essentially only implements this, > though it's called <menuitem> in Firefox. <command> also supports an > attribute that points at other elements to indirectly define features. > > > To move forward on this, here are some proposals: > > #1: Drop <menu> and all related features. I don't think we should do this, > but if we can't get agreement on what to implement, this is the only > option left, so it's on the table. > > > #2: A design that supports context menus and menu buttons using dedicated > markup, with support for indirect defining of commands. > > First, we make <menu type=""> take three values: "toolbar", which just > means to render the element using CSS (the default value for legacy pages, > too), and "context" and "button", which define menus. "context" menus > would be hidden by default, "button" menus would render as a button, > which, when clicked, shows the menu. contextmenu="" can be used to point > to a <menu type=contextmenu>. > > The <menu> element in "context" and "button" modes would only have three > elements as descendants: <menuitem> elements, <menu> elements, and <hr> > elements. (Or maybe no <hr>s, and we do separators by using groups of > <menu> elements without labels.) Other children are ignored. > > <menuitem> elements would just have a label="" attribute and, optionally, > a command="" attribute. The command="" attribute would work as it does in > the spec now, deferring to some existing element. When the menu item is > selected, it would fire click on the <menuitem>, and then as a default > action do whatever the action of the command="" is, if specified. (We can > talk about whether to bother supporting icons in the <menuitem>, and if so > how, especially given high-res screens, but that's a minor detail.) > > With type=button, CSS would apply to the <menu> and <menuitem> elements, > maybe with a limited set of properties applying. Long term, we look to XBL > or Web components or whatever for styling. > > We drop <command> entirely. > > > #2a: Same as #2, except we keep <command> as a way to introduce commands > without using existing elements. > > > #3: We forget the non-JS case; so, the same as #2, but <menuitem> doesn't > get a command="" attribute. We add radio menu items, checkbox menu items, > and the like, over time, as features on <menuitem>. (Defined much like > <command> has some of them defined today.) > > > #4: We do what the spec has now. > > > #5: We do what the spec has now, except we change the type=toolbar to just > be rendered in CSS (and remove type=list, making toolbar the default). > > > #6: Your idea here. > > > So, implementors: Which of these would you be willing to implement? Are > there constraints I've not thought of? Are there features that we need to > deal with that I haven't mentioned above? Are there use cases that we > should just abandon that could simplify the solution drastically? > > -- > Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL > http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. > Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'
Received on Wednesday, 28 November 2012 12:27:51 UTC