[css-ui-4] Name of interactivity property is ambiguous

[lukewarlow]

See https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui-4/#inertness this property name is rather ambiguous given it's very tightly linked to inertness.

If we in future wanted to add an ability to make something focusable via CSS would this property be the right place? Would we want different behaviour (inheritance might be different?).

Just a thought I had when reading the spec the name seems potentially problematic.

[emilio]

cc @mfreed7

[emilio]

(and @flackr)

I personally don't have strong opinion here. interactivity: none makes the element not focusable, but if we want to control focusability with CSS more explicitly, it seems user-focus or so might be a more consistent property name.

[emilio]

I don't have a problem with interactivity as a name. Potentially more specific names could be inert: inert | auto or so, but that does restrict a bit expanding this property in the future if we want.

Anyways @annevk brought concerns about this in whatwg/html#10956, would be good to get a resolution one way or another here?

[emilio]

Existing resolution in #10711 (comment) fwiw

[chrishtr]

I also think interactivity is a fine name. +1 also to interactivity allowing more values in the future if we want.

Also, user-focus is not all that the property does so is too specific.

[mfreed7]

cc @mfreed7

Thanks. +1 to interactivity. It's a general word that can capture changes to interactivity generally. In particular, it seems more amenable to future values that affect "interactivity" without going all the way to "inertness", such as interactivity: not-keyboard-focusable.

[lukewarlow]

I'm happy to accept this and close this issue, was just something that came up. I still think it might be odd if you had the opposite situation where you wanted to make something keyboard focusable with CSS (not sure that'll ever happen but imagine it does) interactivity: keyboard-focusable doesn't guaruntee it's focusable because the browser could still inert it via modal dialog magic and that might be "weird". But it's probably fine.