[whatwg] <menu> and friends

[Tab Atkins Jr.]

On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 10:17 AM, David Young <dyoung at pobox.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 29, 2012 at 01:23:20AM +0000, Ian Hickson wrote:
>> On Sun, 23 Oct 2011, Eric Sh. wrote:
>> >
>> > I was trying out the HTML5 context menu in firefox and I saw that there
>> > is no way(in the specs) to create an empty menu with only selected
>> > context menu items in it.
>> >
>> > So for example if I have an image element and I want to create a context
>> > menu with the items: "Rotate" and "Share" - I have to ask the browser to
>> > "Add" them to the regular context menu along with the ten other items
>> > that are already there.
>> >
>> > This makes a bulky context menu when I only need those two items and it
>> > is especially hurtful for user experience if the context menu is close
>> > to the bottom of the screen and is moved above the mouse cursor.
>> >
>> > I suggest adding a way to ask the browser to create a brand new context
>> > menu with only those items.
>>
>> Not showing the browser's own context menu items is a hurtful user
>> experience as well; indeed, possibly a worse one.
>
> I agree that it's an awful experience, especially because it turns the
> user's habits against them.  If the Nth item in the menu is ordinarily
> the UA's "Copy Link Location" and an app removes or re-orders items so
> that the Nth item changes to "Rotate", "Share", or "Delete," then users
> are in for a surprise when they make the automatic "Copy Link Location"
> gesture.

Gah, strongly agree.  Simple example - I use "Back" constantly in the
context menu, and would be really pissed if pages could easily kill
that.  I already get angry when I accidentally right-click a link and
just select the first option without looking closely.


On Mon, Dec 31, 2012 at 12:54 AM, Jonas Sicking <jonas at sicking.cc> wrote:
> What I was saying as a browser vendor is that I don't think that
> authors are going to use this feature unless it provide the ability to
> replace the existing context menu. Or at least almost entirely replace
> it.

I don't think I can agree with this.  This argument would be more
believable if authors currently used pile-of-divs for context menus a
lot, but I only rarely actually see it.  I think this is because it's
just plain *hard* to do it even half-decently.  The extreme ease with
which authors will be able to create high-quality context menus with
<menu> will, I think, override a lot of the concerns.

That said, I've got no problem with something like "move all of the
normal options to a submenu that's the first item in the menu".

~TJ