<search>

[jensimmons]

Description

There's a new HTML element — the <search> element. It's be great to get interoperability sooner rather than later.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/search

The <search> element automatically provides the correct accessibility semantics for the search section of a website or web app. This aligns with the principles of HTML, making the default accessible, instead of requiring you to remember to take an action to add accessibility.

Specification

https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/grouping-content.html#the-search-element

Open Issues

No response

Tests

https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&q=%28path%3A%2Fhtml-aam%2Froles.html%20and%20subtest%3Ael-search%29%20or%20%28path%3A%2Fhtml%20and%20%28search-styles%20or%20search-element%29%29

Current Implementations

• [x] Blink
• [x] Gecko
• [X] WebKit

Standards Positions

No response

Browser bug reports

No response

Developer discussions

No response

Polls & Surveys

No response

Existing Usage

No response

Workarounds

No response

Accessibility Impact

The

element has great accessibility benefits. That's the point of the element.

Privacy Impact

No privacy impact.

Other

No response

[extra808]

It's good to have a corresponding element for all the ARIA landmarks. <search> shipped in Safari 17, then in Firefox 118, and it's slated to be in Chrome 118 soon. Is there remaining interop work to be done?

[jensimmons]

This is The Question.

<search> is getting implemented now.

How many tests are there? Do they do a good job of testing everything, including accessibility? Is there any risk all three implementations will not have interoperability? If so, hey, let's use Interop 2024 to make sure we've got great interoperability from the beginning.

Or maybe it's so simple, and easy to get right that there's no point in including it in Interop 2024. That everyone will pass all tests / or there aren't even that many things to test. In which case, no, we don't need this to be included.

I opened the issue so we could have the conversation and find out more.

[scottaohara]

the search element is very basic in terms of what it provides for accessibility. its only job is to expose the search landmark role, and firefox's inclusion of it in 118 does this correctly, as does the Chrome canary build where this can be verified now.

[extra808]

Yes, it seems very simple, a quick win.

• [ ] Has display: block in the user agent stylesheet
• [ ] Has "search" role in the accessibility tree
• [ ] Follows the section and grouping element accessible name computation rules

[ramiy]

Duplicate of #418

@jensimmons I've already proposed the HTML <search> element for Interop 2024.

[foolip]

From State of HTML preliminary results, <search> was among the features that respondents expressed the most interest for. Note that this wasn't freeform, it's based on the features the survey asked about experience and sentiment for.

[zcorpan]

There's a test in wpt for accessibility (computed role): https://wpt.fyi/results/html-aam/roles.html?label=master&label=experimental&aligned

Don't know yet if there are tests for accname computation mentioned in https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/issues/572#issuecomment-1753696163

[jensimmons]

@ramiy Oh, I missed that you had proposed it, because you withdrew your proposal. It's good to read through the comments there... but this is now the only active proposal in consideration.

[zcorpan]

Tests for parsing and rendering: https://wpt.fyi/results/html?label=master&label=experimental&aligned&q=search-styles%20or%20search-element

These mostly pass, except for unicode-bidi UA style.

[ramiy]

@ramiy Oh, I missed that you had proposed it, because you withdrew your proposal. It's good to read through the comments there... but this is now the only active proposal in consideration.

When I opened https://github.com/web-platform-tests/interop/issues/418 not all the browser supported this tag. Now, all 3 major browser engines support the HTML <search> element. This proposal is not relevant anymore.

[gsnedders]

There's a test in wpt for accessibility (computed role): https://wpt.fyi/results/html-aam/roles.html?label=master&label=experimental&aligned

Only the el-search subtest, presumably?

[zcorpan]

Yes.

[gsnedders]

Thank you for proposing <search> for inclusion in Interop 2024.

We wanted to let you know that this proposal was not selected to be part of Interop this year.

This proposal was not included in Interop 2024 because when we looked at its Web Platform Tests results, we found that it is already largely interoperable between tested browsers and does not need special coordinated attention.

For an overview of our process, see proposal selection. Thank you again for contributing to Interop 2024!

Posted on behalf of the Interop team.