HTML Can Do That

(chrisburnell.com)

112 points | by encyclopedism 1 day ago

11 comments

  • dematz 24 minutes ago
    This comment by yurishimo should not be [dead], imo

    >Just a heads up but datalist is not really a great solution if you need a strong contract. The user can still type whatever they want into the field and there is no fuzzy filtering or typo mitigation. Once you add those requirements, a library that gives you a more fully featured combobox is likely going to make a lot of sense in your project.

    It is true! HTML can do a lot of cool stuff, it might get you 100% of the way depending on what you're doing. But if you have a lot of forms where users pick from a value set, and want to enforce no other strings and get a good search experience, datalist does not get you there.

    • Gualdrapo 11 minutes ago
      I seem to recall there was a proposal to add such thing to <select>s
    • kotaKat 6 minutes ago
      (iirc if you have [showdead] on you can click on the timestamp to the comment and will get a [vouch] option as a reverse-flag, fwiw. i see it and don't have showdead enabled, so enough people have re-vouched it!)
  • jamescun 34 minutes ago
    I'm that minutia in your statistics that is still rocking NoScript in 2026, enabling JavaScript on a site-by-site basis, but this is increasingly difficult with the modern web.

    Hopefully these and others modern HTML features gain adoption, along with realizing perhaps a Single Page Application isn't necessary in most instances.

    I don't often have to write frontend code, but when I do, there is very little in terms of interactivity you cannot do with HTML these days, worst case a little sprinkle of something like HTMX.

    • bee_rider 4 minutes ago
      Thank goodness you exist, the fingerprinters will be confused as to which one of the two of us went to their website!
  • yoz-y 13 minutes ago
    I think it’s neat but at the same time I’m cautious about implementing an “almost feature” in what’s supposed to be a declarative language.

    Now everybody needs to support it and nobody can really use it.

    I’m talking about the features in work like media controls on dialog buttons.

  • hk__2 8 minutes ago
    Related to this, I’d love that HTML natively support sortable tables. This is a common need but every single time I have to reimplement it.
  • jdlshore 36 minutes ago
    The “hidden until found” feature surprised me. What’s the use case for something like that?
    • dofm 22 minutes ago
      Looks like it's basically like a one way show-hidden mechanism only the browser's built-in search will pop it open on matches.

      So you could use it for additional notes, things like "view pricing terms" or "show exclusions" on product listings — stuff people need to read only when they need to read it — without it being hidden from them if they search for it.

    • seki285 16 minutes ago
      One thing that comes to mind is JS-less image preview, clicking on an image thumbnail reveals the full preview.
  • hakesson 26 minutes ago
    Yeah, I'm a great fan of both HTML and CSS "can do that". I find more useful things on the CSS side like :has, keyframes and container queries. Why duplicate code when you have it for free :)
    • Sohcahtoa82 18 minutes ago
      Yeah I've seen a page that described a whole bunch of things you can do with CSS. So many animation options!
  • bingemaker 14 minutes ago
    <img> also supports "srcset" which can make the image component responsive. Hope they add a placeholder to it which can account for loading state.
  • hyperhello 28 minutes ago
    I don’t understand why the group invented these new attributes and methods of action for dialogs that don’t seem relevant to anything else. Was there some silly patent to work around?
    • esprehn 12 minutes ago
      As opposed to what? Not sure what the alternative you're picturing is.
      • hyperhello 5 minutes ago
        popovertarget="example-dialog" popovertargetaction="hide"

        It’s all binding. This is what JavaScript is for: dynamic content.

  • totallygeeky 15 hours ago
    I've been tooling with site for years now and I'm always shocked at what can be done with raw HTML. These are some really neat examples, some work a bit funny when it comes to mouse vs. arrow key functionality though (in particular the dropdown/autocomplete), I'm wondering if that's an Edge specific issue or Chromium.
  • yurishimo 16 hours ago
    Just a heads up but datalist is not really a great solution if you need a strong contract. The user can still type whatever they want into the field and there is no fuzzy filtering or typo mitigation. Once you add those requirements, a library that gives you a more fully featured combobox is likely going to make a lot of sense in your project.
    • vlucas 12 minutes ago
      Very true, and ran into this one specifically myself when going down the "HTML can do this!" road. HTML can NOT, in fact, replace a good combobox with search input. Datalist has significant shortcomings. I wound up using a React island for this single input inside otherwise normal HTML, despite my own objections, because it really it just that much better than the native options.
    • sarchertech 14 minutes ago
      There’s still browser/OS typo mitigation.
    • reaperducer 9 minutes ago
      That's the whole sanitize vs. validate argument debate that keeps coming up.

      How you handle it is project-dependent. But if you're doing a real web site, not an SPA, you can show an error/help page, or re-load the current page with the error/help message.

  • iamgopal 12 minutes ago
    [dead]