design-reviews#1206: Other Spec Review: OpaqueRange

Opened

Mar 20, 2026

Specification

Explainer

https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/OpaqueRange/explainer.md

Links

Previous early design review, if any: https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1142
An introduction to the feature, aimed at unfamiliar audiences: Introduction
A description of the problems that end-users were facing before this proposal: User-Facing Problem
Alternatives considered: Alternatives Considered
Examples of how to use the proposal to solve the end-users' problems: Proposed Approach
What do the end-users experience with this proposal: Proposed Approach
User research you did to validate the problem and/or design, if any: No formal user research; relevant validation feedback is included under “Other feedback and reviews” below.
Web Platform Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/dom/ranges/tentative?label=experimental&label=master&aligned

The specification

Follows the Web Platform Design Principles.
Includes Security and Privacy Considerations sections based on answers to the Security/Privacy Questionnaire.
- Filled out questionnaire: https://github.com/MicrosoftEdge/MSEdgeExplainers/blob/main/OpaqueRange/security-privacy-questionnaire.md

Where and by whom is the work is being done?

GitHub repo:
- https://github.com/whatwg/dom
- https://github.com/whatwg/html
Primary contacts:
- Stephanie Zhang (@stephanieyzhang), Microsoft, Chromium implementer and spec contributor
- Dan Clark (@dandclark), Microsoft, engineering lead and spec editor
- Leo Lee (@leotlee), Microsoft, team lead
Organization/project driving the specification: WHATWG
This work is being funded by: Microsoft
Primary standards group developing this feature: WHATWG
Group intended to standardize this work: WHATWG
Incubation and standards groups that have discussed the design:
- WHATWG: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11478
- CSSWG: https://github.com/w3c/csswg-drafts/issues/10346
- TPAC 2025 Meeting Minutes: https://www.w3.org/2025/11/11-whatwg-minutes.html

Feedback so far

Multi-stakeholder feedback:
- Chromium comments: Positive; Chromium is prototyping the feature and plans to begin developer and origin testing soon
- Mozilla comments: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1289 and https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/11478#issuecomment-3887267749
- WebKit comments: https://github.com/WebKit/standards-positions/issues/541
- Other feedback and reviews:
Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
- No major unresolved design objections at this time. The proposal has continued to evolve based on prior TAG feedback and ongoing multi-stakeholder discussion
Status/issue trackers for implementations:

You should also know that...

This proposal previously received early TAG design review in https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1142, under its earlier name, FormControlRange, which was later renamed to OpaqueRange.

Since that review, the proposal has advanced to Stage 2 of the WHATWG process, evolved into draft specification text in WHATWG DOM and WHATWG HTML, and incorporated feedback from Mozilla and Apple.

Track conversations at https://tag-github-bot.w3.org/gh/w3ctag/design-reviews/1206

Comment by @stephanieyzhang Mar 20, 2026 (See Github)

Hello,

I noticed that issue #1206 for OpaqueRange https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1206 was closed shortly after filing. It was initially created without the full content because I had lost my draft before submitting, but I updated it shortly afterward and before it was closed. Sorry for the confusion.

Could you please reopen the issue? If a different review template would be more appropriate, I’d be happy to adjust it.

Thanks, Stephanie

On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 11:36 AM Christian Liebel @.***> wrote:

Closed #1206 https://github.com/w3ctag/design-reviews/issues/1206 as completed.

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Comment by @christianliebel Mar 20, 2026 (See Github)

@stephanieyzhang Reopened! Sorry for the inconvenience. We occasionally receive spam posts without the completed template.

Discussed Apr 6, 2026 (See Github)

Luke, Matthew assigned

Discussed Apr 20, 2026 (See Github)

Luke: Seems like a worthwhile API. For some use cases, I wonder if CSS would be an alternative.

Discussed May 11, 2026 (See Github)

Luke: Had a look at this, API itself seems good, not heavily scoped on form controls like it used to be, they’ve fixed that. Might be used on custom elements on the future. One issue that I still have is, for one of the use cases, a CSS counter part around anchor positioning may be useful for this. Left a comment on the private brainstorm, maybe Dan can answer this. There is an emoji picker when you type a colon. It would be good to know if that’s a limitation of the demo or if it’s not part of the API design.

Dan: Yeah, the demo should have a "scroll" listener... contenteditable, drawing a range around the selected text, drawing a bounding box around the selected text. There’s maybe another feature proposal that could be considered future work. I think of this as a way to get people started … you would need a scroll listener to do this right

Luke: Agree it’s making one part of this nicer, and follow-ups are possible.

Jeffrey: Feel without anchor positioning this is never scrollable on the background thread, so we could say we are hoping or a follow-up feature. But sounds like satisfied?

Luke: Yes. It's also not just the scrolling, but block flipping.

Jeffrey: Do you want to take a look at this before Luke sends a comment?

Matthew: Don’t let me block it. I’ll take a look as soon as I can, but I don’t think there’s anything significant I could add.

Luke to write a draft comment.

Comment by @lukewarlow May 21, 2026 (See Github)

Hi @stephanieyzhang, the TAG discussed this and are positive about this feature.

The use cases are solid and we’re glad to see the API design has evolved with feedback.

We would still encourage you to consider extending Anchor Positioning, to allow for more declarative approaches to layout for the popup use cases.

We’ll resolve this as satisfied.

#1206: Other Spec Review: OpaqueRange