Because frontend is frontend, Javascript frameworks dominated the conversation even for silly things like basic web forms for the past 15 years. Basic HTML/CSS is now catching up to the fact that not everyone wants to run a Javascript monstrosity for custom styling on very basic tasks.
The prevalence of JS and JS backed components is due to the reluctance of browser vendors to introduce new HTML elements that everyone has been lobbying for in the same time period.
By and large browser vendors for the longest time, even today still in many respects, repeatedly ignore pleas for more elements that cover common use cases.
Even when they do arrive, they can be half baked - like dialog or details / summary - and that doesn’t help matters
> Even when they do arrive, they can be half baked - like dialog or details / summary - and that doesn’t help matters
How are those half-baked? No smooth transition for details/summary, maybe?
Dialog seems to work well enough with little to no javascript required:
<dialog>
<h3>Warning:</h3>
...
<button onclick='this.closest("dialog").close()'>Dismiss</button>
</dialog>
There's some quirks with the API around open vs openModal if you aren't aware of the accessibility implications you may not even realize this is the case.
Forms have some special quirks inside of a dialog.
The biggest thing though, is for the life of me I don't understand why you can't open and close a dialog without JavaScript. There's no way to do it.
> The biggest thing though, is for the life of me I don't understand why you can't open and close a dialog without JavaScript. There's no way to do it.
You can use popovers like this without JavaScript:
<button popovertarget="some-element" popovertargetaction="show">Open</button>
<div id="some-element" popover="auto">
<button popovertarget="some-element" popovertargetaction="hide">Close</button>
</div>
I don’t think there’s any way at present to open a `<dialog>` element specifically without JavaScript, but command/commandfor handles this and was recently added to the HTML specification:
I'm with you... would be nice to have:
<button type="open-dialog" target="dialogId">Open Dialog</button>
...
<dialog id="dialogId">
<button type="close-dialog">Close Dialog</button>
</dialog>
> I'm with you... would be nice to have:
You can do this right now already:
// For opening
<button onclick='document.querySelector("#dialogId").showModal()'>Open</button>
// For closing
<button onclick='this.closest("dialog").close()'>Close</button>
> It would just make so much sense.
That way above that I propose is about as sensible as the way you propose. If there are any problems with my proposal that are solved by your proposal, I'd love to hear it.
The point was to be able to do it without JS.
I understand, but from a pragmatic viewpoint, it is no more and no less complicated to do it with `onclick` JS than it would be to do it with some other attribute.
For all practical purposes, there is no difference between the two.
I understand that the `onclick` wouldn't fire in browsers where JS is turned off, but in that case (no JS) you're going to have an awful user experience using dialogs even with builtin open/close attributes for dialogs.
If you need to worry about ADA compliance (I always do, but not always paid to), this can be difficult to address.
I remember Opera, before it was bought, had the best support for html5 elements and date/time inputs were the best (along with almost all others). Sad to think that a leader in this area was sold off, and not to a buyer that cared about usability and the web the way Opera did.
You can't make enough HTML elements to make everyone happy. This was the wrong idea from the start.
The solution isn't to make a new html element for each use case.
The solution is to make html elements extensible.
With the `appearance: base-select` css rule, we now have a standardized way to extend <select> with html and css, (and we have the potential to declaratively extend intractability too with invoking commands without needing to reach for JS)
> The solution is to make html elements extensible.
The solution would be to make Apple ship this:
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Global_att...
I would argue you can make enough HTML elements to make enough people happy. 80% for the 80%.
Forms are hard because they are the most stateful and most ubiquitous UI component that everyone comes in contact with. HTML has a few barebones tools to help you out, but they aren't good enough for the best user experience if you really wanted to polish a form like show errors exactly when you want to show them and only allow submission exactly when you want to allow it and represent error states in much better ways.
It's especially obvious once you're making forms outside of HTML and you realize that it's not any simpler with any less UX consideration. The only thing that changed was the language you're writing that polish in.