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

[Maciej Stachowiak]

On Mar 21, 2012, at 7:54 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:

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> <dialog> will give a better user experience than even a non-modal version of window.confirm() or window.alert(). Dialogs that are fully in-page 

Oops, got cut off here. What I meant to say is something like "dialogs that are fully in-page are the emerging standard for high-quality page-modal prompting".

I should add that this could be partly for path-dependent reasons, and that if other technologies had been available, authors might not have resorted to in-page modality with overlays. But I think the key missing enabled was not asynchrony but rather the ability to fully control the UI, layout and available commands of the modal experience.

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> alert() is mostly only used by either by sites with a low-quality user experience, or as as non-production debugging aid. In both cases, authors who care about the user experience will use <dialog> or a JS-implemented "lightbox" style dialog. And authors who do not care about user experience, or who are doing a quick debugging hack in non-production code, will use old-fashioned blocking alert/confirm/prompt. Thus, I am not sure there is really a meaningful audience for the non-blocking editions of these calls.
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> Regards,
> Maciej
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