Comment by prmph
2 days ago
So after decades of developer pain, all we're getting is a better select?
Where is the native HTML datagrid (that supports sorting, filtering, paging, downloading, row/column freezing, column resizing and re-ordering)?
Where are the native HTML Tabs control? Image selector, resizer/cropper, and uploader? Toggle button? etc.
We can't even get text input to respect autocomplete directives properly. On the major browsers, giving your user id and password inputs nonsensical names seems to be required, along with numerous other hacks, to ensure that when a user is registering, the form is not auto-completed with saved passwords.
HTML is really holding us back right now.
Progress is very gradual in this space, but browser vendors are working on a lot of this stuff in the Open UI W3C community group. https://open-ui.org/
https://open-ui.org/components/combobox.explainer/ https://open-ui.org/components/switch.explainer/
> Where are the native HTML Tabs control?
You implement tabs today (aka accordions) with `<details name="tab">`. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/de... "This attribute enables multiple `<details>` elements to be connected, with only one open at a time. This allows developers to easily create UI features such as accordions without scripting."
You do have to write some CSS to align tabs horizontally, but it's fine.
> Image selector?
Use `<input type="file" id="avatar" name="avatar" accept="image/png, image/jpeg" />`. Opens the OS photo picker on mobile. You can style it however you like.
> We can't even get text input to respect autocomplete directives properly.
"Properly" seems to be doing a lot of work there. "autocomplete" works fine, but it's annoying to get it right, and this kinda can't be fixed, because HTML is under a lot of backwards-compatibility constraints.
If you have autocomplete bugs to file, file them, and maybe convince the Interop group to focus on this issue. Their priorities for 2025 were just announced, but there's always next year. https://web.dev/blog/interop-2025
> it's annoying to get it right, and this kinda can't be fixed, because HTML is under a lot of backwards-compatibility constraints
Sorry, but this seems like a wild mischaracterisation, at least in regards to the problems I've had with users on Chrome. In our experience, Chrome aggressively shows an autofill prompt on almost every input it can. It also ignores the specced autocomplete=off attribute. We have observed Chrome showing a password prompt on an <input type=number> which is just bonkers. It is not hard NOT to do this.
The Chrome team thinks whatever heuristic they're using is better than allowing developers, or even end users, to control filling behaviour.
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41163264 https://issues.chromium.org/issues/41239842
(By "autofill" I don't necessarily mean the input is automatically filled without user interaction, but sometimes a promotions shown with e.g. account login details or an address.)
The argument has been that developers are naughty and turn off autocomplete inappropriately, which worsenes accessibility. But I've never seen e.g. a tooltip option in a browser to let me, the user, fill in details when I know they're appropriate? I am merely at the whim of the Chrome algorithm.
Problem with autocomplete=off is some morons think they should use it on their login form for "security" or whatever, cause forcing users to type in passwords is "secure". So browsers wound up having to ignore it for actual security.
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Yes, disabling autocomplete can be annoying, but it is possible. Usually it amounts to being more descriptive in the value of the `autocomplete` attribute, rather than simply applying `autocomplete=off`.
> We have observed Chrome showing a password prompt on an <input type=number> which is just bonkers.
"We have observed" it, but not filed a bug? Neither of the bugs you linked to exhibit that bug.
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> Use `<input type="file" id="avatar" name="avatar" accept="image/png, image/jpeg" />`. Opens the OS photo picker on mobile. You can style it however you like.
This just selects the image. 99 times out 100, you want to do the same things with the image data: adjust it in some way, and save it to object storage or something. The file input is too primitive for this. And this is the theme all over, HTML control remain too primitive to do any real world rih UI with, which leads to the proliferation of JS UI libraries.
> If you have autocomplete bugs to file, file them, and maybe convince the Interop group to focus on this issue. Their priorities for 2025 were just announced, but there's always next year. https://web.dev/blog/interop-2025
Autocomplete "bugs" abound aplenty, some of which will make your jaw drop. I've been testing with Chrome and Firefox. The length to which browsers will go in a misguided attempt to be clever with auto-complete is frankly absurd. So I'm not sure they are "bugs" so much as they are a wilful refusal by browser vendors to follow the spec.
> Autocomplete "bugs" abound aplenty
No, there's just the one "bug": browsers ignore autocomplete=off.
And, as you say, the browsers regard that not to be a bug, because when they honor developers request to prevent autocomplete, users keep filing bugs on the browsers, saying "why won't you autocomplete this??"
Put something descriptive in the autocomplete, instead of "off", and you're usually fine.
Consider the "State of HTML" survey of form pain points. https://2024.stateofhtml.com/en-US/features/forms/#forms_pai...
See also the "missing elements" section. https://2024.stateofhtml.com/en-US/usage/#html_missing_eleme...
An image cropper didn't make the list. Data table did! But it's pretty complicated, and, as I said, progress is slow. Partly that's for backwards compatibility reasons, and partly it's because you have to get Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Mozilla to all agree on anything, and that's really hard.
Autocomplete is on the list of pain points. But it's wayyy further down the list than having a customizable `<select>`. Styling & customization, validation, and `<input type=date>` are all bigger pain points than autocomplete.
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> 99 times out 100, you want to do the same things with the image data: adjust it in some way, and save it to object storage or something.
That's kind of a bonkers expectation for the browser to fill. It's like expecting that <input type="audio" /> should let me crop the audio and add reverb to it. That's two specific manipulations out of untold thousands, and squarely within the purview of a different app. https://editor.audio/ (never used this, just an example)
> This just selects the image. 99 times out 100, you want to do the same things with the image data: adjust it in some way, and save it to object storage or something. The file input is too primitive for this.
That's not true at all. Obviously there's no `adjustinsomeway` or `savetoobjectstorage` attribute on the <input> element, but you can trivially grab the selected files, read them, and act on them with JavaScript: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/File_API/Us...
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> This just selects the image. 99 times out 100, you want to do the same things with the image data: adjust it in some way, and save it to object storage or something.
This is probably the reason why someone invented the <canvas> element?
Datagrid is mysteriously missing on several newer desktop UI frameworks too, which effectively makes those frameworks ill-suited for a whole range of desktop applications. The only place reasonably batteries-included versions of those widgets can be found are in the old guard toolkits like AppKit, win32, MFC, Qt, GTK, etc.
> Where is the native HTML datagrid
Which parts of a datagrid should a browser provide? I'm familiar with AG Grid [1] and the API surface is enormous. Aligning browsers on a feature set would be challenging.
Maybe there's a core set of functionality, like Flutter's GridView or QML https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/qml-qtquick-gridview.html.
[1]: https://www.ag-grid.com/
The simplest would be to follow the aria role=“grid” spec, ideally with sortable columns. IMO it doesn’t need the kitchen sink AG Grid approach just a sane way to semantically build a data grid with proper accessibility.
https://www.w3.org/WAI/ARIA/apg/patterns/grid/examples/data-...
It has to handle every possible use case for a grid. You’re thinking of your use case. The spec needs to handle everything else. I don’t see how that’s manageable.
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Imo it’s not html, it’s browser vendors. There’s a decent specification for the `autocomplete` attribute: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Attributes...
It is actually a reaction to websites doing stupid things to try and prevent password auto-fill. The sites are fighting against security in a misguided attempt to improve security, so the browser vendors added a bunch of heuristics to try and correct these situations and you end up with the mess we have.
Equally having to jump through extra hoops to prevent autocomplete where you don't want it is frustrating, like in admin interfaces where you might be updating someone else's name.
It's an arms race of stupidity.
RE autocomplete in Chrome. The only thing we've found to work reliably is ensuring that all inputs are in form elements. Any inputs outside forms are going to have inappropriate autocomplete prompts. It's extremely annoying but at least this works for now.
(I say "for now" because who knows when the Chrome team will change their heuristic?)
Nah, this does not work reliably. The weirdness I've found regarding autocomplete will fill a book.
I'd love to read a "Falsehoods programmers believe about..." post about this!
Why wouldn’t you put your inputs in a form element?
> Why wouldn’t you put your inputs in a form element?
Not all inputs are form-submission data.
For example a datalist-backed input to scroll to a specific page/chapter/section/subsection in a long document. You might populate the datalist with hundreds of entries so you don't have a long list of links that the user will have to scroll through in the sidebar. You can perform the scroll on the change event of the input.
That's a good UI for the user, instead of presenting a long list of links for the user to browse/search through, they simply have the input auto-suggest based on the populated datalist.
I mainly work on a large complex SPA with UX that does not often look like a form, but does have lots of inputs. These days I'm much bigger on semantic HTML, to the small extent it matters in our case, but there is a large burden of pages which were just div soup and loose inputs.
I'm just glad I don't have to support IE6 anymore.
> Where is the native HTML datagrid
Imagine a world where instead of letting IE die, microsoft decided to add a <XLS> tag in the early 2000. The most used nocode database in the world directly in the browser. In 2000.
Internet Explorer had a native Data Grid with two-way data binding and much more.
https://schepp.dev/posts/today-the-trident-era-ends/#data-gr...
That's a great article about advancements in IE that still haven't all been matched.
I'm not finding any of those proposals on the whatwg html repo, mind linking them?
That's my point, they are not on the roadmap, although they absolutely should be, IMO.
The W3C and WHATWG have their priorities mixed up.
I think some of this stuff isn't the responsibility of HTML. If HTML already has a full autocomplete spec, isn't it the fault of browsers/extensions/OS if the implementation is broken? Or are you saying the spec is too ambiguous?
A lot of stuff becomes redundant under the framing that HTML is designed to provide semantics, not a user interface. How is a toggle button different from a checkbox? How are tabs different from <details>, where you can give multiple <details> tags the same name to ensure only one can be expanded at a time?
Image manipulation is totally out of scope for HTML. <input type="file"> has an attribute to limit the available choices by MIME type. Should there be special attributes for the "image" MIME type to enforce a specific resolution/aspect ratio? Can we expect every user agent to help you resize/crop to the restrictions? Surely, some of them will simply forbid the user from selecting the file. So of course, devs would favor the better user experience of accepting any image, and then providing a crop tool after the fact.
Data grid does seem like a weak spot for HTML, because there are no attributes to tell the user agent if a <table> should be possible to sort, filter, paginate, etc. It's definitely feasible for a user agent to support those operations without having to modify the DOM. (And yes, I think those attributes are the job of HTML, because not every table makes sense to sort/filter, such as tables where the context of the data is dependent on it being displayed in order.)
Generalized rant below:
Yes, there are pain points based on the user interfaces people want to build. But if we remember that a) HTML is a semantic language, not a UI language; and b) not every user agent is a visual Web browser with point-and-click controls, then the solution to some of these headaches becomes a lot less obvious. HTML is not built for the common denominator of UI; it's built to make the Web possible to navigate with nothing but a screen reader, a next/previous button, and a select/confirm button. If the baseline spec for the Web deviates from that goal, then we no longer have a Web that's as free and open as we like to think it is.
That may be incredibly obvious to the many Web devs (who are much more qualified than me) reading this, but it's not something any end user understands, unless they're forced to understand it through their use of assistive technology. But how about aspiring Web devs? Do they learn these important principles when looking up React tutorials to build some application? Probably not—they're going to hate "dealing with" HTML because it's not streamlined for their specific purpose. I'm not saying the commenter I'm replying to is part of that group (again, they're probably way more experienced than me), but it reminded me that I want to make these points to those who aren't educated on the subject matter.
HTML can never be meaningfully improved, that fact is at the heart of the current attitudes by the browsers. We are 20 years into the takeover from the W3C and still can't even do a PUT request without JS, nevermind anything approaching even one tenth of the capability of XForms.
The best we'll get is little improvements like this which everyone will ignore because ChatGPT will recommend some react component instead.
Right? There are already dozens of deprecated elements, just deprecate these too and give us new ones that actually do what they're supposed to do and don't require us to know the entire history of HTML just to do a dang <select> that isn't ugly.
Safari already has toggle buttons and autocomplete directives.
Apple’s webkit team killed customised built-in elements by refusing to implement them on ideological grounds, so you get a dripfeed of piecemeal solutions instead.
Apple is actively sabotaging the web for a number of years now. They don't want web apps to be able to compete with native iOS apps.
And they prohibit different browsers from the app store, so users don't even have a choice.
Those reasons are not ideological and there's a new proposal that doesn't have the downsides of the original spec and enables new use cases discovered since: https://github.com/WICG/webcomponents/issues/1029
Nothing with customizable built-ins would give you what the original commenter asked for
you forgot the most important one, where s the browser native virtual list, grid and table?
> Where is the native HTML
14 years have been wasted on making web components happen, and they still offer... nothing really, and people already advise to skip large portions of their specs (Shadow DOM) even if you adopt them.
Imagine if the literally millions of dollars spent of them were spent on something like https://open-ui.org/ (started by Microsoft of all companies and now also completely overrun by Googlers)
I find web components very useful. Yes, I avoid shadow DOM as it only makes things more complicated for me, but having bits of functionality grouped in a new tag is great.
Yeah, the "HTML Web Components" can be useful: https://adactio.com/journal/20618 and https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2023/html-web-components/
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Please forgive my tangential rant on the DOM. You have an input field where type=number and when you read it with .value() you get a string. Cmon man.
There is .valueAsNumber. input.value returns a string, regardless of the input type. Making the return type dynamic would be worse, imo.
> Where is the native HTML datagrid (that supports sorting, filtering, paging, downloading, row/column freezing, column resizing and re-ordering)?
That's called <table>.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39489285
I'm not sure how those comments address the need for a built-in table element with the said features. Can you explain, or link to demo that shows what you are trying to say?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121881