Re: Interaction with invisible elements

On Mon, 5 Mar 2001, Eric Meyer wrote:

> At 22:50 -0800 3/4/01, Ian Hickson wrote:
>
>> Mozilla treats elements that are 'visibility: hidden' as if they were
>> not available for user interaction because it is very bad UI to have
>> invisible elements react to the user. We decided that good UI was
>> overall a better aim than the few edge cases. ;-)
>>
>> Authors of other UAs probably did the same.
>
>     An interesting assertion.  Why is it bad UI?

One of the cornerstones of good user interface design is to let the user
know what he should do. *Hiding* what the user should do is pretty much
the opposite.


> I can think of at least a few cases where you might want to have
> invisible elements that can react to the user's input.

See:

   http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=6635

...and note the number of duplicates. Authors complained loudly when
Mozilla implemented what you want. :-)


> Actually, my investment in this issue is not to have invisible
> elements available for interaction (although I think that would be
> cool) so much as it is to get the specification clarified either in
> the CSS2 errata or in the appropriate module(s) of CSS3.

Agreed. You should raise the issue with the working group.

-- 
Ian Hickson                                     )\     _. - ._.)       fL
Netscape, Standards Compliance QA              /. `- '  (  `--'
+1 650 937 6593                                `- , ) -  > ) \
irc.mozilla.org:Hixie _________________________  (.' \) (.' -' __________

Received on Monday, 5 March 2001 14:34:17 UTC