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Bug 28212 - Making an element with tabindex attribute to be an interactive content breaks backward compatibility
Summary: Making an element with tabindex attribute to be an interactive content breaks...
Status: RESOLVED INVALID
Alias: None
Product: HTML WG
Classification: Unclassified
Component: HTML5 spec (show other bugs)
Version: unspecified
Hardware: PC All
: P0 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: steve faulkner
QA Contact: HTML WG Bugzilla archive list
URL: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipag...
Whiteboard:
Keywords: a11ytf, a11y_focus
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2015-03-13 22:18 UTC by Tooru Fujisawa
Modified: 2015-06-19 15:01 UTC (History)
4 users (show)

See Also:

Attachments
demo for tabindex, label, and input (708 bytes, text/html)
2015-03-13 22:18 UTC, Tooru Fujisawa 		Details

Description Tooru Fujisawa 2015-03-13 22:18:37 UTC 
Created attachment 1584 [details]
demo for tabindex, label, and input

Originally reported here:
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1141455
  https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135374

In the attached demo (copied from http://jsbin.com/budisehuyo/3/ ), what the spec says is that clicking on the span element should not turn on/off the checkbox, right?

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#the-label-element:the-label-element-10
> The activation behaviour of a label element for events targeted at interactive
> content descendants of a label element, and any descendants of those
> interactive content descendants, must be to do nothing.

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/dom.html#interactive-content-2
> Interactive content is content that is specifically intended for user
> interaction.
> The tabindex attribute can also make any element into interactive content.

Now it's implemented in Firefox Developers Edition 38.0a2 (2015-03-13) and Firefox Nightly 39.0a1 (2015-03-13).  But the behavior is different from previous versions and other browsers, and it causes compatibility problem in capitainetrain.com (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1135374 ).

Could we remove "The tabindex attribute can also make any element into interactive content." from 3.2.4.2.7, or add some restriction to make it backward compatible?
Comment 1 Charles McCathieNevile 2015-03-14 00:24:47 UTC 
Also added to where I am tracking tabindex stuff as part of fixing focus navigation / activation shortcuts, etc. https://www.w3.org/WAI/PF/HTML/wiki/Tabindex
Comment 2 Michael[tm] Smith 2015-06-16 10:11:11 UTC 
Agree that it would be good to have a spec change here, and raising priority after reviewing implementer feedback.
Comment 3 Charles McCathieNevile 2015-06-19 15:00:25 UTC 
The spec makes sense, and capitainetrain.com shouldn't have nested interactive elements.

What they have done is analagous to having

<label>
  <a href="#">you can't do
    <a href="http://w3cmemes.tumblr.com">THIS</a>
  without expecting problems.
  </a>
</label>

I propose closing this as invalid
Comment 4 Charles McCathieNevile 2015-06-19 15:01:29 UTC 
The tabindex should be applied to the label, or the input, which are already interactive elements.