W3C

– DRAFT –
Open UI Telecon

27 August 2026

Attendees

Present
brecht_dr, dbaron, flackr, gregwhitworth
Regrets
-
Chair
Greg Whitworth
Scribe
jarhar

Meeting minutes

<gregwhitworth> FYI on Overscroll updates: openui/open-ui#1507

<gregwhitworth> github-bot, take up openui/open-ui#1463

Should the step between be able to differ between each thumb when more than 2 thumbs

<github-bot> OK, I'll post this discussion to openui/open-ui#1463

brecht_dr: *explains issue*

gregwhitworth: when people were asking for this, did they have use cases?

brecht_dr: yes

brecht_dr: if there is no use cases, i feel like we should at least document that this was discussed if people want to reopen it later on

brecht_dr: but then at least we already thought about it and it showed up

brecht_dr: i dont see ?? use cases with different thumbs

gregwhitworth: does anyone disagree?

<gregwhitworth> github-bot, take up openui/open-ui#1462

Have a way for <rangegroup> to have a maximum space between

<github-bot> OK, I'll post this discussion to openui/open-ui#1462

brecht_dr: *introduces issue*

gregwhitworth: i recommend trying to get a v1 variant out that is the 90% use case. if its a new attribute theres no web compat concern. nothing stops you from including it in the explainer now

gregwhitworth: as it gets out there, some devs have started giving you isnights. it would be good for us to ship something

gregwhitworth: somebody from yamaha was working on range but it was a circular dial and they wanted haptics

gregwhitworth: we then can get it in peoples hands and then they could find out if they needed to go back into building it themselves

gregwhitworth: you know this control better than anybody

gregwhitworth: we can always add stuff, we should just get that 90% dialed in

brecht_dr: do you recommend that i add this one for a v1 explainer? or just leave it out for now

gregwhitworth: i would leave it out

gregwhitworth: if you have to include it because every design system has it, we can come back. adding an attribute youve got it in your head. i would try to keep it scoped and limited, were getting into some game theory here

gregwhitworth: the smaller the api surface the better for a first go around

gregwhitworth: we know every attribute you add is going to be debated. being able to go into it with confidence that every design system uses this

gregwhitworth: adding another attribute later is easier

brecht_dr: its a small use case, so yeah if its better to start small then ill leave it out for now

gregwhitworth: we left select multiple off. multiple is very common

<gregwhitworth> github-bot, take up openui/open-ui#1461

Rangegroup two thumbs at the same time

<github-bot> OK, I'll post this discussion to openui/open-ui#1461

brecht_dr: *introduces issue*

jarhar: +1 to not doing multi touch

<gregwhitworth> jarhar: I agree to not doing multi-touch, there isn't precedence for this

<gregwhitworth> jarhar: I've also never tried to do this

flackr: theres a bit of precedent here with scrolling

flackr: that you can have two different scrollers and in theory you could scroll those two things at the same time, but thats not what we do, we start a zoom gesture

<dbaron> Do we support sliding 2 *different* sliders at the same time?

gregwhitworth: i was thinking of when would you want this, and going back to time length thing, lets say you want a 1 hour meeting

gregwhitworth: pretend that range is a calendar thing

gregwhitworth: you can change the length of the time. you want that constrained and then slide the two handled

gregwhitworth: what may make sense in that case is by having a third thumb, thats in between and hidden, that allows you to move them both and keep the constraints

gregwhitworth: youre still putting one finger on the screen

gregwhitworth: it makes more sense - ive set my length and now i just want to move the time around

gregwhitworth: i like your time one because we can all imagine it

gregwhitworth: i do think figuring out a solution to that is important. not sure if it needs to be in v1. i could imagine a ton of debate on that

gregwhitworth: i would probably make it a v2 thing

anaskim: something similar ive seen is when youre editing a video in your phone and you cant move both of the limits at the same time. you have to move one and then the other or the whole range. i dont think theres a lot of precedent for moving two sides at the same time

gregwhitworth: video editing is very similar. similar to a performance trace in devtools

gregwhitworth: theres a ton of use cases here, time range

brecht_dr: next issue is about segment dragging

brecht_dr: for this we can just say that two fingers does pinch zoom

proposed resolution: dont support multitouch gesture to move two sliders at the same time

<brecht_dr> proposed resolution: dont support multitouch gesture to move two sliders at the same time by dragging two thumbs at the same time

RESOLUTION: dont support multitouch gesture to move two sliders at the same time by dragging two thumbs at the same time

<gregwhitworth> github-bot, take up openui/open-ui#1460

Segment dragging on range inputs

<github-bot> OK, I'll post this discussion to openui/open-ui#1460

brecht_dr: *introduces issue*

flackr: if were supporting this dragging in the middle feature that maybe clicking to move the thumb is more of a single thumb action or only when youre outside of a draggable range

flackr: i worry about linking an action to move a thumb with an action for moving both of the thumbs

flackr: im having a hard time reasoning about these three+ thumb cases. do you have real world examples of them?

flackr: in one of the previous issues i thought maybe it would be valuable to have different mins and maxes but i cant imagine such an application right now

gregwhitworth: the one i was going to bring up is for mixers - when you move the master it moves 5 others along with it

gregwhitworth: what youre saying rob, i think - if i touch i am either clicking or pressing and holding the thumb that changes the thumb location

gregwhitworth: if i press in the middle then it should not get magical and try to choose a thumb to move

gregwhitworth: clicking in the middle should basically be a prevent default

flackr: yeah and maybe theres a future where it ? that segment

gregwhitworth: if you have shaky hands or on a bumpy road that could make this hard

gregwhitworth: *visually demonstrates circular 2 thumb range slider*

gregwhitworth: how your clicks work on those thumbs matters after you ship it

brecht_dr: one of the first things that people asked is can i make a thumb move when i click on the track. a lot of people expect that behavior. the form element that we have now is when you click on the track it moves the thumb, and people expect that for two thumbs

brecht_dr: another big question we get here is if you can drag the segment, should the segment become focusable? if youre a keyboard usable you probably want to select the first thumb and then the second and then the second thumb

brecht_dr: you want a keyboard user to be able to drag the segment as well, at least thats what i think

brecht_dr: its definintely worth thinking about

gregwhitworth: on the multi range - the focus one should be a separate issue on its own. going back to the thing about segments

gregwhitworth: with the native ones, im not aware of a native html one which allows multiple thumbs

gregwhitworth: we can still be web compatible with - if youre clicking an area thats not between the two

gregwhitworth: then it would move the closest thumb. but not move either thumb if you click in between them

flackr: it makes the click action consistent with the drag action

vmpstr: i dont know if i agree with that

vmpstr: purely as a user, i always expect that a range with a 2 thumb thing, when i click outside of that range i am going to center that range over where i clicked

vmpstr: i can only increase using this which is really weird to me

vmpstr: theres a priority of the size of this is more important than its location

vmpstr: calendar events are half an hour, if i click around then im intending to move this block around because the size of it is important to me

vmpstr: theres cases for both but purely opinionated is that as a user im always expecting the center to move rather than the endpoints

flackr: what i like about that is that its consistent. anything outside of the thumbs is move the range, and then on the thumb is move the thumb

brecht_dr: one of the most typical ones is price sliders. minimum and maximum price

brecht_dr: there i see a lot of use cases where i want to increase the min an bit or the max, but dont want to drag the range

brecht_dr: i can still see use cases to click on the track to change one thumb

brecht_dr: video and time ranges

brecht_dr: really depends on the use case

brecht_dr: im guessing theres no way to make both possible

flackr: maybe this needs to be a mode on the dragger. to say the intended use case is one where you care about the endpoint and one is about the range and the application can decide

brecht_dr: i like that idea personally but people dont like to add attributes

gregwhitworth: if you ground in the use cases. i dont necessarily follow

gregwhitworth: its good for us to align on terminology. vlad is saying that if ive selected the calendar whatever item, and then clicked on another range, i expect it to move it to the other range

gregwhitworth: weve seen the one with price, i just want to click one end and then click the other

gregwhitworth: if you have solid enough use cases, it will be hard for someone to argue that you shouldnt support them

brecht_dr: can the proposed resolution in this case to look into a mode and create a new issue to create a name for that mode?

flackr: the attribute could be mode, draggable, i dont know, but something

brecht_dr: theres so many directions here on calling it a mode or draggable

brecht_dr: i dont want to just write something in the explainer, this one should be bikeshedded more. draggable is something that exists already

brecht_dr: maybe its too niche or small for this

flackr: draggable is weird because its not at all the same thing but it does interefere with the behavior here

gregwhitworth: i dont think you need to create a new one

gregwhitworth: there should be some way to change modes

gregwhitworth: outside of the impl oddities of draggable, we were just talking about how the segment should always be draggable, so adding draggable is confusing. id argue against that for several reasons

<brecht_dr> proposed resolution: There should be a way to change modes, making the segments draggable versus having a click to move the thumbs. This to cover usecases where the range is more important versus start and and end points

flackr: i imagine that drag is going to have a meaning in both of these modes

flackr: in one mode youre dragging the segment, in the other youre dragging the thumb

flackr: if clicking moves the nearest thumb position, then dragging should also move the thumb to where youre dragging

<brecht_dr> proposed resolution: There should be a way to change modes, making the segments draggable versus having a click/click+drag to move the thumbs. This to cover usecases where the range is more important versus start and and end points

vmpstr: we have very few data points in this room of whats the right thing. we could look out there and how do current cases behave? if 90+% of cases do it one way then we could just punt this and do it that way. but if its more like 50/50 then a mode is a good way to go

brecht_dr: and then we can discuss the default

flackr: in mac it moves the thumb to where my cursor is and starts dragging it

gregwhitworth: if you do that research, then mode is something that you can punt on. it would allow you to iterate more quickly

brecht_dr: ill add documentation on what libraries are doing

brecht_dr: less frequent in libraries but more common in apps

<gregwhitworth> github-bot, take up openui/open-ui#1459

Link input elements with a slider value

<github-bot> OK, I'll post this discussion to openui/open-ui#1459

brecht_dr: *introduces issue*

<gregwhitworth> jarhar: I think this could be a separate thing, even with a single thumb it's useful

<gregwhitworth> jarhar: in iOS if you have an alpha slider and you adjust it you update the input

<gregwhitworth> jarhar: before I saw the contribution I thought it's the correct way to have semantic linking so you can just type in the answer

gregwhitworth: +1 to it being a separate proposal

<brecht_dr> +1

gregwhitworth: weve started to dig into where steve is starting to go - native data binding, thats what were talking about

gregwhitworth: control-value() css thing is related

gregwhitworth: joey to your point i think it makes it a separate issue about how the data gets there. theres the range that i see everywhere where there may or may not be a tooltip where theres things at the bottom

gregwhitworth: the thing you brought up should be different in dom. when im in office or whatever different suites and they have a dropdown for zoom, im like just let me type in what i want

gregwhitworth: so im now curious brecht, should the dom just have that input from a better ux perspective

gregwhitworth: using the color input wheel, font size is always off to the side theres a range there

gregwhitworth: is that just part of the dom? and then the whole data binding thing is separate

gregwhitworth: i think its worth thinking about

gregwhitworth: if you solve data binding then you can say range doesnt have a sibling input by default

gregwhitworth: the only reason i say that is because i dont want to tackle data binding - i dont want to do this the simple solution, i think that invokers is going to be too simple, i want to solve data binding and pull in state management

gregwhitworth: its a can of worms

brecht_dr: you agree that it should be some separate track? i agree with joey that its not difficult to dual handle, its something you want for a single slider as well. should be tackled outside

brecht_dr: as a developer i would find it strange if you explain that single range doesnt have it and dual range does, there should be one solution that handles both, whether thats invokers or something else

brecht_dr: dual range slider you have a input by default and single you dont

brecht_dr: you want a switch for both these cases rather than just having it in enhanced range

brecht_dr: simply put i agree with joey - there should be a solution for input type range that also works with range group with two sliders

gregwhitworth: is range group always two?

brecht_dr: at least two

gregwhitworth: enhanced range is also i can have a single thumb right?

brecht_dr: no

gregwhitworth: i think you should

gregwhitworth: if you introduce a new element that makes it so i can do whatever i want then it should also work with one thumb

gregwhitworth: i dont think we want more than one range element, so sure its a range group its a group of one

brecht_dr: ill make sure that explainer gets updated and follows that idea

Summary of resolutions

  1. dont support multitouch gesture to move two sliders at the same time by dragging two thumbs at the same time
Minutes manually created (not a transcript), formatted by scribe.perl version 248 (Mon Oct 27 20:04:16 2025 UTC).

Diagnostics

No scribenick or scribe found. Guessed: jarhar

Maybe present: anaskim, jarhar, vmpstr

All speakers: anaskim, brecht_dr, flackr, gregwhitworth, jarhar, vmpstr

Active on IRC: anaskim, brecht_dr, dbaron, flackr, gregwhitworth, jarhar, vmpstr