[whatwg] Proposal for non-modal versions of modal prompts

[Ian Hickson]

On Mon, 19 Mar 2012, Jochen Eisinger wrote:
> 
> I'd like to put forward a proposal for extending the modal prompts 
> (alert/confirm/prompt) with an optional callback parameter. If the 
> optional callback parameter is present, the javascript execution would 
> resume immediately. The callback will be invoked when the dialog that 
> doesn't need to be browser modal now, is closed.
> 
> I wouldn't add such a callback to showModalDialog, as I think sites can 
> use e.g. window.open instead.
> 
> I've written up the proposal here: 
> http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Modal_prompts
> 
> The motivation for this is that in a tabbed browser, modal dialogs are 
> potentially disrupting the work flow of the user as they can't interact 
> with any other web site as long as the modal dialog is displayed.
> 
> Current browsers are having problems with the modal prompts:
> 
> Chromium for example doesn't display a window created by showModalDialog 
> in a modal way: http://crbug.com/16045
> 
> WebKit and Firefox don't suppress events while a modal dialog is 
> running: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=78240 and 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=360872
> 
> Firefox displays modal prompts as tab-modal. However, it's possible to 
> execute JavaScript in a tab that should be blocked by a modal prompt: 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727397 and the prompts from 
> separate tabs can block each other: 
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=727801
> 
> Feedback on this proposal would be highly appreciated!

Moving forward, I think the <dialog> element that we'll soon be adding is 
probably a better direction to go in.

http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Dialogs#Proposal

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