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

[Darin Fisher]

On Wed, Mar 21, 2012 at 8:03 PM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:

>
> On Mar 21, 2012, at 7:54 PM, Maciej Stachowiak wrote:
>
> >
> > <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".
>

Non-blocking window.{alert,confirm,prompt} would most likely be rendered by
UAs as in-page overlays / tab-scoped dialogs.  This is what we would do in
Chrome, and it seems like others would do the same given the prevalence of
the standard window.{alert,confirm,prompt} being implemented in a
tab-scoped manner already by some browsers (albeit with bugs).

I think people use alert, confirm and prompt in part because they are so
easy to use.  People who choose window.{alert,confirm,prompt} probably
don't care about loss of customization or else they would roll their own
dialogs.

Why not provide less sucky versions of those common dialogs?

Benefit:  Less code for simple dialogs.
Con:  Another web platform API to standardize.

-Darin



>
> 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.
>
> >
> > 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.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Maciej
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
>
>