Design Review #610

#610: inert attribute

Opened Feb 16, 2021

Wil sha TAG!

I'm requesting a TAG review of the inert attribute.

A node (in particular elements and text nodes) can be marked as inert. When a node is inert, then the user agent must act as if the node was absent for the purposes of targeting user interaction events, may ignore the node for the purposes of find-in-page, and may prevent the user from selecting text in that node. User agents should allow the user to override the restrictions on search and text selection, however.

The inert attribute is a boolean attribute that indicates, by its presence, that the element and all its shadow-including descendants is to be made inert.

Explainer: https://github.com/WICG/inert/blob/master/explainer.md
Specification URL: https://whatpr.org/html/4288/16fbe73...d4ed883/interaction.html#inert-subtrees
Tests: https://wpt.fyi/results/inert
Security and Privacy self-review: https://github.com/WICG/inert/blob/master/security-privacy.md
GitHub repo: https://github.com/WICG/inert/
Primary contacts (and their relationship to the specification):
- Alice Boxhall (@alice), Google/Chromium
- Brian Kardell (@bkardell), Igalia
Organization(s)/project(s) driving the specification: Google/Chromium
Key pieces of existing multi-stakeholder review or discussion of this specification:
- https://github.com/whatwg/html/pull/4288
- https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/174
External status/issue trackers for this specification: https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5703266176335872

Further details:

I have reviewed the TAG's Web Platform Design Principles
Relevant time constraints or deadlines: No deadline, but hoping to ship soon. (I didn't realise until I was filling out the intent to ship that I never actually requested a TAG review, to my surprise.)
The group where the work on this specification is currently being done: WICG, WHATWG
The group where standardization of this work is intended to be done (if current group is a community group or other incubation venue): WHATWG
Major unresolved issues with or opposition to this specification:
- https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5650
This work is being funded by: Google

We'd prefer the TAG provide feedback as (please delete all but the desired option):

💬 leave review feedback as a comment in this issue and @-notify @alice

Discussions

2021-02-22

Minutes

Lea: concern that this is a boolean attribute, once you turn it on for a subtree there's no way to turn it on for a descendent element, which I think there are use cases for (comment) but otherwise straightforward.

Tess: the way dialog and inert are built on the same model... dialog imposes inert on everything else whereas inert imposes it on a subtree. But i agree punching out of inertness in a subree is useful outside of the dialog scenario

Lea: dialog doesn't even use this?

Tess: the point is that the concept of inertness in the spec that underlies the inert attribute is also used by dialog. But dialog is not using the inert attribute because these are two ways of exposing a similar behaviour in two different parts of the tree.

Dan: needs security and privacy review - pending. Premature to close. Two weeks

2021-03-22

Minutes

Propose closing, waiting for feedback from Tess