Comment by Tommy Hodgins on "HTML 5.2 - Why?"

The HTML spec says that the <dialog> element is for:

part of an application that a user interacts with to perform a task, for example a dialog box, inspector, or window.

This could be something like a dialog that appears when you click to edit a profile picture on a website - you aren't taken away from that page, but you have entered into a new state in that page where only a small amount of content is relevant to what you're doing, and normally it's not even visible (though it is part of the HTML and always present, ready to be displayed at the right time)

This pattern is usually called a 'modal window' and there are many examples of that you can find online, and a ton of plugins for doing it. Now this is something built-in to HTML that we won't need plugins for (once browsers support it)

edenspiekermann.github.io/a11y-dialog/example

we won't need plugins for (once browsers support it)

It takes an average of 4-6 years for something to be globally adopted, if it ever is. Microsoft going to Chromium is a good move, it but still doesn't correct the issue of cross-browser compatibility, which is bound to get worse since everyone these days seem to be throwing in their own solutions hoping that everyone will abandon the others. During that 4-6 year period, everything is reinvented because the previous iteration(s) aren't understood.

So, like building a tower on a vanilla wafer foundation, half of what's not fundamental will go bye-bye. Instead of trying to make things effective and productive, the industry is creating incompatible shortcuts, and in the end, no one will understand the path to achieve - or be able to fix - what they need to when there's no longer a shortcut.

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