[Range] Clarifying the propagation of the disabled attribute

[brechtDR]

The <rangegroup> is modeled after the grouping behavior of <fieldset> and <legend> for accessibility and structure. This parallel makes the behavior of the disabled attribute critical, especially for form submission and progressive enhancement.

Specific Questions Raised by Feedback:

Group Disabling: If the disabled attribute is applied to the <rangegroup> (e.g., <rangegroup disabled>), does it cascade to and disable all contained <input type="range"> handles? Should the <rangegroup? allow a disabled attribute to begin with?

If yes on group disabling:

1. Granular Control: Can individual handles maintain a disabled state while the parent remains active?
2. State Persistence: If the entire group is disabled and later re-enabled, should individual handles that were previously disabled retain their initial disabled state, as is standard behavior for other HTML form elements?

We need some clear specifications for the behavior of the disabled attribute on both the parent <rangegroup>(optional) and its child elements, ensuring that the defined propagation rules support the intended progressive enhancement fallback and consistent state management.

[css-meeting-bot]

The Open UI Community Group just discussed [Range] Clarifying the propagation of the disabled attribute, and agreed to the following:

• RESOLVED: A disabled state on the rangegroup should make it completely disabled, a thumb can be individually disabled, but when all thumbs are disabled, it should behave like a fully disabled group

The full IRC log of that discussion

<keithamus> q+
<keithamus> ack brecht_dr
<jarhar> keithamus: it seems straightforward to me that each thumb if disabled would not do the default activation and skip focus
<jarhar> keithamus: you can programatically change the value
<masonf> q+
<jarhar> keithamus: seems useful to have disabled on the range group, and that would propagate to all handles
<jarhar> masonf: i agree
<keithamus> ack keithamus
<keithamus> ack masonf
<jarhar> masonf: if an individual handle is disabled it should stay locked in place at that value and not have nudging behavior
<brecht_dr> q+
<jarhar> brecht_dr: if you had some form controls through js that depend on selection of something else
<jarhar> brecht_dr: the progressive enhancement, what if you want to set both thumbs to disabled
<jarhar> brecht_dr: both range sliders would be disabled
<jarhar> brecht_dr: but then you dont have disabling as a group in that case
<jarhar> brecht_dr: does two thumbs being disabled mean the same thing as the group being disabled?
<jarhar> masonf: you mentioned progressive enhancement. if you dont have the rangegroup, then you have sliders painting on top of each other?
<jarhar> masonf: a range group that only has disabled sliders could become disabled. i wonder if that announced any differently
<jarhar> masonf: a fully disabled full range slider gets its track painted as disabled in addition to the thumbs
<jarhar> keithamus: that seems easy enough to do
<jarhar> keithamus: you can probably do that with css today as well
<jarhar> keithamus: other than styling, presumably each of the thumbs is a tab stop, so if you disabled them all then theres no tab stop
<keithamus> q?
<masonf> q?
<keithamus> ack brecht_dr
<brecht_dr> PROPOSED RESOLUTION: A disabled state on the rangegroup should make it completely disabled, a thumb can be individually disabled, but when all thumbs are disabled, it should behave like a fully disabled group
<masonf> +1
<keithamus> +1
<brecht_dr> RESOLVED: A disabled state on the rangegroup should make it completely disabled, a thumb can be individually disabled, but when all thumbs are disabled, it should behave like a fully disabled group