On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Sean Hogan wrote: > > So the ::backdrop could be styled to not cover the whole page? > Could it default to a "top" layer, but optionally be given a z-index?
The ::backdrop specifically would just be immediately below its element in the "top layer" stack, at least as proposed. Could you elaborate on what your use case is for moving it to other layers? (Ideally with examples of dialogs that do this in the wild -- see the wiki page on which we designed the <dialog> feature -- http://wiki.whatwg.org/wiki/Dialogs -- for the examples that have primarily driven the design so far.) On Thu, 5 Apr 2012, Sean Hogan wrote: > > So this "top" layer prevents all user-interaction with the rest of the > page? No, that would be inherent in the <dialog> "showModal()" behaviour. > If that's the case, it seems a bit inflexible. I would imagine that some > UI designers would like parts of the page to still be clickable - a > couple of examples: > > - a toggle button to show / hide the dialog (probably part of a menu-bar). > - a menu bar with buttons that, when activated, first dismiss the dialog Those sound like non-modal dialogs. Do you have any examples of modal dialogs on the Web that have these behaviours? As above, screenshots and URLs to such examples would be really helpful. Cheers, -- Ian Hickson U+1047E )\._.,--....,'``. fL http://ln.hixie.ch/ U+263A /, _.. \ _\ ;`._ ,. Things that are impossible just take longer. `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'