[whatwg] showModalDialog

[James Graham]

Hallvord Reiar Michaelsen Steen wrote:

>On 1 Jul 2005 at 11:44, Sanghyeon Seo wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Concerning recent thread about modal and modeless windows, did anyone
>>mention showModalDialog already?
>>
>>http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/methods/showmodaldialog.asp
>>
>>I believe this functionality does come in handy in some cases.
>>Microsoft wouldn't have implemented it if there wasn't any demand?
>>    
>>
Just because there was demand doesn't mean that it was a good idea. (the 
demand was almost certianly from people developing desktop aopplications 
with HTML UIs. In this case the objections to modal windows are much 
less strong).

>
>One of the reasons why modal popup-windows are a very bad feature in 
>a browser is that, unlike a desktop application, you don't really 
>know what other pages you prevent the user from accessing by throwing 
>up a modal dialog. To go with the address book example from the 
>previous thread: I click "edit" in my fancy address book application, 
>a modal window pops up, I want to go to the tab where my E-mail lives 
>to copy the address I wanted to put in my address book and ... ouch, 
>can't get to the E-mail because I use an integrated browser/mail 
>client application and the modal dialog blocks access to all the 
>tabs.
>  
>
Indeed. Presumably developers would have to implement a system whereby a 
modal dialog was only modal with respect to the opening tab (and any 
other tab/window that was also opened by that tab). This would create a 
totally alien interaction model where clicking on a tab in the browser 
could focus that tab or could focus an entirely different window.

-- 
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