[webkit-dev] The case for disallowing alerts in unload, redux

[Sreeram Ramachandran]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 13:40, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
> On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:37 PM, Ryosuke Niwa <rniwa at webkit.org> wrote:
>>
>> On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:34 PM, Sreeram Ramachandran
>> <sreeram at chromium.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> A confirm() can't actually do the first option ("Don't leave"). I
>>> believe there's nothing a page can do to prevent the navigation once
>>> it is in unload. The only way it can prevent it is by installing a
>>> beforeunload and returning a string.
>>
>> Right.  So a web page can first ask whether a user wants to save states or
>> not.  Then ask whether a user really wants to leave a page or not using
>> beforeunload.
>
> To further clarify, it doesn't even have to use beforeunload.  The important
> thing is that if we disallow confirm in beforeunload, unload, etc... then
> web apps will have no way of asking a user if he/she wants to save states.

The problem is that if we disallow alerts, but not confirm/prompt,
webpages will just gravitate to using confirm() to annoy the user. As
I said, the only uses of confirm() I actually saw were of this type
already. Those who wanted to save state are already doing it without
asking the user for explicit confirmation.

If the argument is purely that somebody _might_ want to use it, since
confirm/prompt functionality can't be exactly duplicated in another
way, then I submit the case of showModalDialog(). Certainly you can do
things with showModalDIalog() (such as popping up a form with the
state, allowing the user to edit and submit) that can't be done with
alert/confirm/prompt. However, we already disallow these, since by
default, popup blocking kills these. I don't see anybody championing
the need of developers to be able to use showModalDialog, because we
recognize that they are extremely annoying, especially when you are
trying to leave a page.