[whatwg] Thoughts on Context and Popup Menus for Web Applications 1.0

[Ian Hickson]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Lachlan Hunt wrote:
> 
> We should not give authors the power to override the UAs context menu. 
> Enough authors already try with JavaScript which more often than not 
> just creates usability problems.  Thankfully, descent browsers now 
> prevent authors blocking/overriding the context menu, let's not make it 
> easier for them.

Indeed, any context menu concept introduced in WA1 would have to have an 
"escape clause" to let UAs allow users to access the original menu.


> I'm not objecting to having elements specifically for menus, as long as 
> their names are semantic (unlike <popup> which also suggests its 
> presentation), I object to the method you have proposed for accessing 
> the menu.  The method should not be defined like that, but should be 
> left to UA and the presentation (CSS) and sometimes behavour 
> (JavaScript) layers to determine.

Conceptually you have a document fragment and a list of commands that 
apply to that fragment. It seems that linking those two parts would be a 
markup-level problem. Context menus make sense on any interactive media, 
not just on visual media.

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
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