Weekly Meeting Topics

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

Currently meetings are held on Discord. If you're interested in joining let us know!

Jan 5th, 2025

• META: Was this cherry-picked PR handled correctly?
• Review browser targets:
  • https://caniuse.com/?search=popover Do we need to polyfill this with behavior()?
  • https://caniuse.com/?search=commandfor Do we need to polyfill this with both behavior() and CommandMixin for menuItem?
  • missing.css and missing.ui can have different targets
  • a component that displays a message if the viewer is not using a supported browser?
• What "other changes" was deniz considering in this PR comment?
  • Should we support mixin mixins?
  • Should we group mixin "properties" into a single static list/object?
• Discuss Add aria-icon POC #144 (it was accidentally merged in before approval)
  • Should we just always look for sprite sheet with fallback of fetching+console warning?
• BUG: Browser .internals initialization timing

Possible Future Discussions

• Change custom element prefix?
• Implement custom attributes instead of aria- (e.g. just label, actions, controls, selected, orientation, etc) A: very unlikely
• Are we using too many event listeners (idk)? Should we find a way to combine them across mixins? A: could use handleEvent()? Might be premature optimization
• Custom element for displaying code previews / playground / copy to clipboard, allows changing writing-mode and dir
• Does customizable select, which allows arbitrary content in <option> mean that <select size=n> can be used as a native listbox? What about when it comes to using the listbox as part of a combobox? A: they're not quite ready yet, and even so would take some time to hit our target support
• Compare / contrast u-elements tab impl
• How to improve demos of new elements:
  • toolbar
  • feed
  • tabset
  • listbox
  • menubar
• aria controls:
  • What to do about aria-controls w3c/aria#995
  • Revising what ARIA attributes should be considered global w3c/aria#999
  • do we need aria-controls for content that immediately follows the control w3c/aria-practices#805
  • Required roles for aria-controls w3c/aria#2724
  • Mentions in APG:
    • menu button
    • tabs
    • disclosure navigation
    • navigation menu button
    • menu button actions

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

Jan 12th, 2025

• Add (optional?) "connected" listener into validate()? Move it into 19.js?
• New ariaState function:
  • Does aria:${state} get fired when the attribute is set in DOM? Or only when it's set in JS?
  • Some pascalCase inconsistencies (most of these aren't states, but we just need to be aware that the proper call would be e.g. ariaState("multiSelectable"):
    • aria-labelledby -> ariaLabelledBy
    • aria-describedby -> ariaDescribedBy
    • aria-roledescription -> ariaRoleDescription
    • aria-braillelabel -> ariaBrailleLabel
    • aria-brailleroledescription -> ariaBrailleRoleDescription
    • aria-setsize -> ariaSetSize
    • aria-multiline -> ariaMultiLine
    • aria-multiselectable -> ariaMultiSelectable
    • aria-colindextext -> ariaColIndexText
    • aria-rowindextext -> ariaRowIndexText
• <feed>
  • Use attribute:aria-busy instead of mutation observer?
• What does initChildren look like? Probably replace with slotchange event
  • Possible use cases: FocusGroupMixin, TabList, ListBox
  • Probably not <feed> if we use attribute:aria-busy.
• attr(el, name) uses content attribute names and el.attr(name) uses IDL attribute names.
• DisableableMixin and possible new code structure:
  • AriaDisabledMixin, DisabledMixin, Disabled, DisabledState, OrientationProperty?
  • /src/js/states/selected.js? /src/js/properties/orientation.js? /src/js/aria/properties.js?

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

Jan 19th, 2025

• Discussing Add AriaMixins #149 and ergonomics of new Aria helpers/mixins
• Project structure:
  • Move validate.js into 19.js? A: split tag utils into separate file
  • Yay or nay on big aria.js file? A: yay

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

January 26, 2025

• Distinguish between AriaProperty(aria) and AriaState(aria)? A: Yes
  • Only have an init event for AriaProperty / maybe not even that: use no event listeners and put any initialization code in the AriaProperty definition (e.g., if (role(this) == "tabs") { ... })
  • Would reduce some edge cases (c.f. AriaMultiselectable)
  • Would it need to be memoized?
  • Goal: heavy lifting all happens in AriaFoo mixins, actual components should barebones.
• Wire up slotchange event instead of MutationObserver for initChildren kind of behavior (e.g. guaranteeing a tabindex=0) A: sadly no, we need to track subtrees in some cases
• <tabset>
  • Is it crucial for authors to use aria-controls or can we use ElementInternals? A: Not if we can make a clean impl that allows for adding tabs dynamically
  • Should we remove multiselect?
    • What is a "multi-selectable tablist"? w3c/aria#1355
    • Panelset & tabs: defining separate goals for each pattern openui/open-ui#559
• <toolbar> / FocusGroup
  • auto-orient <hr> or custom role=separator? A: New element that auto-orients itself.
  • form element heights? c.f. demo
• <menubar>
  • mousedown vs click
  • custom <aria-group checkable=single|multipke>? A: Yes
  • popover=manual necessary for nested menus, should it just be default?
• FocusGroupMixin
  • disabled / hidden breaks navigation (c.f. /demos/apg/toolbar/)
  • Arrow keys in <input type=text> break navigation
  • Revisit opting into focusgroup via setting tabindex (requires setting tabindex for native focusables (<button>, <select>, <input>, <a>). A: the only way to do a roving tabindex requires -1. How to opt out? A: Use a special value like -7822865⁩ for roving tabindex. Opt out with -1, opt in with invalid tabindex value.
• styling <toolbar>, <tabset>, <menubar>.
• Browserlist: ariaControlsElements, ariaLabelledByElements, popover, popoverTargetElement

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

February 9, 2026

• Does FocusGroupMixin really need a MutationObvserver? can focusin be used instead? A: Stop trying to avoid MutationObserver, it's just gonna be a thing. It's necessary in case the element with tabindex=0 gets removed from the DOM.
• How to use AriaOrientation with a vertical default? A: Move the states call into connected like other AriaProperties do.
• Does an ariaLabel(el, value) helper make sense?
• Can/should ariaRelatives use internals or should we just use...internals()? A: Use internals().
• Focusgroup:
  • Initializing with aria-selected|checked and [selected|checked]
  • Arrow keys in <input type=text> A: Probably make <aria-input-button> wrapper

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

February 18th, 2026

• add tree to 2.0.
  • basically a combination of listbox and menulist. Will be helpful in sorting out Focusgroup mixin.
  • treegrid too? Requires 2D focusgroup, is it worth prototyping in 2.0? A: Let's move it to the next release with 2D FocusGroup + Combobox, etc
• should tabs and menuitems have slots?
  • How could a <aria-treeitem> icon slot change based on aria-expanded? A: add two icons to the slot, show/hide with CSS
  • Could slot=actions be useful? Add <aria-actions> tag? Could help with tabbing in/out, [aria-actions] etc.
  • how to add slots to a tag()? Could we do something similar to stylize? A: add them as HTML to the shadow dom
• should disconnecting / removing an element also remove it's ariaControlsElements? What does it mean to "close" a tab? A: Let authors decide what it means to close a tab. No need for disconnect/reconnect events bc tab might just be getting moved, etc
• how many competitors support e.g. Mongolian? A: none of the ones i tested even support Arabic

[geoffrey-eisenbarth]

February 25, 2026

• what's the plan to close other 2.0 css tickets? Do we feel differently about any of the issues? Anything else with css that we want in 2.0?
• close Cascade layers #96
• impl Remove the grid system #99
• probably close Customizable <select> support #91 ?
• Should v2 be a separate branch from dev? A: Nope, not enough issues to warrant a 1.2.1
• Still interested in class name overhaul? A: Yes, but we'll need to pick our own conventions. We do like the CSS property/value syntax.
• scoped missing.css so we can disable it in demos: A: The hard part, i think, is the build process to wrap all of the library in ˋ.missing-cssˋ or @scope or w/e. Esp since some annoying @ rules can't be nested @Keyframes burned me a few times A part dos: might not be necessary to add this to v2.0 if we can skirt around it for <html-example>
• should AriaOrientation do anything re: new reading-flow property? Needs research
• do we actually need <aria-actions> to act as a toolbar, or can the slot just function as the element (and set aria-actions on the parent). Would mean normal tab navigation between actions instead of keyboard arrows). If we did use "actions" as the slot name, we could set aria-keyshortcuts as a slot too.
• should listbox options be highlight-able? c.f. css' user-select also what about click+drag for multiselect?
  • set user-select: none on listbox, menulist, tree, with opt-out attr.
  • impl click+drag for single and multiselect (c.f <select>).
• hash out <html-example>
  • toggle missing.css on off (adoptedStyleSheets in ShadowDOM + all:initial)
  • toggle dir=rtl|ltr and writing-mode
  • copy code button
  • toggle markup / live ui