Add open state to <select>

[gregwhitworth]

In Open UI we have decided for a need to have an open state for the <select> element when the listbox part is visible. Would you like me to open a PR for this? This attribute will allow styling aspects of the select parts based on the state of the <select>.

https://open-ui.org/components/select#open

[domenic]

I think it would be more helpful to start earlier in the process of https://whatwg.org/faq#adding-new-features. The linked document seems to be some sort of API documentation (I'm not sure for what... a mix of the select element as it exists today, and some future proposal?).

What we'd appreciate instead at this stage is an explanation, for this particular proposal, of what problem is trying to be solved, in terms of use cases.

Since you seem to have a particular solution in mind, you could also outline why you think that solution meets those use cases. But it's more important to figure out what the use cases are, so that we can discuss various ways of meeting them. For example, since this is about styling, I'm imagining there might be both HTML-side and CSS-side solutions that we want to contrast and compare.

[annevk]

(See also #3976 and https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=25452.)

[gregwhitworth]

I think it would be more helpful to start earlier in the process of https://whatwg.org/faq#adding-new-features. The linked document seems to be some sort of API documentation (I'm not sure for what... a mix of the select element as it exists today, and some future proposal?).

As noted in this issue comment regarding meta Yes this is a future proposal and I'd prefer to avoid producing yet another document that is outlined in this explainer unless absolutely necessary which is what is driving the Open UI effort which identifies these gaps.

I'm not sure for what... a mix of the select element as it exists today, and some future proposal?

Yeah, this is the output from Open UI as everyone building a component/control ends up building a specification like this. There is currently no one place to get all ARIA, HTML, CSS, etc in one place. So Open UI aims to fix this and hopefully simplify implementation efforts for anyone building a control/component (we've found even native control teams (UA and OS) do this same work up until the specific web platform [eg: ARIA adjustments]). I can do the FAQ but am curious if I should do a holistic FAQ for <select> in general and outline the currently known gaps identified in Open UI rather than just for open state.

[domenic]

From what I understand you've opened this issue for a specific proposal, which has something to do with select being open. It would be good to explain, in this thread and without having to read another large document, what the use cases are.

[domenic]

To give an idea of why the linked explainer is not very helpful for this issue, its goals section does not list anything about an "open" state. Ctrl+Fing for "open" has a lot of false positives, but the only related sentence I can find is

Additional states for the controls will also be standardized as appropriate, such as an open state for <select> to allow styling like the following:

which doesn't really explain why someone would want to style the open state, or discuss why it would need a HTML proposal (as opposed to a CSS proposal).