HTMLSelectElement showPicker()

[w3cbot]

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§ w3ctag/design-reviews#900

[niklasegger]

This is a really tricky issue and also a bit of a rabbit hole.

We have talked about the consistency between select.showPicker and input.showPicker. However, it seems that even within the input.ShowPicker cosm, the browser implementation differs greatly.
For example, you can tab into the date input picker in Chrome and Firefox (on macOS). In Safari (introduced in version 17.4) you can also see the picker, but you cannot focus it. You navigate within the input using the arrow keys and the corresponding date change is only displayed in the picker (also macOS. Maybe I missed something, just tested this briefly). So nothing to focus there. Mobile is another story.

Nevertheless, I personally tend to say that the picker or the first focusable element of the picker should be focused when opened by the showPicker function. Both for select and for the input elements. And if this is not possible, focusing the select / input element could be a backup.

I think you can also argue that the new popover API is quite similar to the pickers on a first glance (like a small overlay window that can also be opened programmatically). In a short test with Safari/Chrome and macOS, the popover was not focused after it was opened through a code function. Probably outside the scope of this discussion, but I wanted to mention it anyway.

An interesting question from zcorpan, which I would also like to mention again here, is what happens when the picker is opened by showPicker and then closed (to the comment)? Where should the focus move to? To the button that triggered the function or to the input? In my opinion, there are good points in favor of both sides.