<search> element

[domenic]

Request for Mozilla Position on an Emerging Web Specification

• Specification Title: <search> element
• Specification or proposal URL: Add the <search> element whatwg/html#7320
• Mozillians who can provide input (optional): @annevk, @smaug----, and @hsivonen have been involved in these discussions

[annevk]

From @hsivonen in a comment on the PR:

If a <search> element is added, making it close <p> is probably the right thing to do. I'm not convinced that adding the <search> element is worthwhile, since it doesn't add expressiveness but mainly addresses a principled concern that all of ARIA should be ported to HTML in non-ARIA form, but I don't know enough about the use cases to argue strongly in favor or against.

I don't have a particularly strong opinion on this either, though I do think it's valuable for HTML to be expressive enough that in most situations web developers don't have to reach for ARIA.

Overall I'd lean towards worth prototyping for this therefore.

[bgrins]

We're generally supportive of the goal here, and when I initially looked at the data I found top 10 most common aria roles on HTTP archive I found this element really compelling (~18% of pages have a role=search and it's the most common role other than presentation which doesn't have an element).

However, when digging deeper into the data I believe that form role=search is much more common than div role=search. From a preliminary analysis on HTTP Archive that @rviscomi was kind enough to help with it appears that for the search role, ~16% of pages use form and ~2% use div. I'm not saying I'm opposed to the new element, but that does seem to limit the benefit as compared to i.e. nav which doesn't have this split behavior with forms. And, could there be confusion with pages currently using the form with role knowing whether or not they should be migrating from <form role=search> to <search><form> or <form><search>? @domenic I didn't see discussion about this in the issue but may be missing it - has this already been considered?

[domenic]

Yeah, that was discussed around whatwg/html#5811 (comment) and subsequent comments. Apparent either <search><form> or <form><search> are exposed the same way to AT. We have an example in the spec draft of the former.

[zcorpan]

Apparent either <search><form> or <form><search> are exposed the same way to AT.

@jcsteh commented on this point in whatwg/html#5811 (comment) , but the conclusion still seems to be that the experience for AT users is probably the same. I don't see any impact on the spec PR for this point, though, but can keep in mind when explaining or documenting the element.

I've discussed with @hsivonen and @jcsteh; we're not completely sold on the idea that all ARIA roles must have an HTML equivalent, but also not opposed.

"worth prototyping" is now called "positive". I'll add the label; no dashboard entry (unless requested).