Intent to Deprecate and Remove: 'results' attribute for <input type=search>

[TAMURA, Kent]

Contact emails

tk...@chromium.org

Spec

None.  A WebKit extension.

Summary

In Blink, 'results' attribute just adds a magnifier icon to an INPUT field.  It's a cosmetic feature.

In desktop Safari, it controls how many submitted queries are shown in a popup opened by clicking the magnifier icon.

This is a WebKit-extension, and it seems no one tried to standardize it.

We'd like to deprecate this attribute in M51, and remove it in M53.

Demo link

data:text/html,<input type=search results>

Motivation

It's a WebKit extension.

Interoperability risk

Firefox: Not implemented.

Edge: Not implemented.

Safari: Shipped for years

Web developers: No signals

Compatibility risk

https://www.chromestatus.com/metrics/feature/timeline/popularity/50

The usage is about 0.04%.  However, because this is just a cosmetic feature in Google Chrome, it should be safe to remove it.

Ongoing technical constraints

We had to relax OSX sandbox only for 'results' attribute.  See crbug.com/508935 and crbug.com/505836.  We can avoid this issue by drawing an image ourselves.  However, investing in a WebKit-only feature is not reasonable.

Was this feature supported on all six Blink platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux,

Chrome OS, Android, and Android WebView)? Yes or no.

Yes.

OWP launch tracking bug

crbug.com/590117

Link to entry on the Chrome Platform Status

https://www.chromestatus.com/feature/5738199536107520

Requesting approval to remove?

Yes.

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TAMURA Kent
Software Engineer, Google

[Jochen Eisinger]

lgtm1

[PhistucK]

This actually seems very useful.

And while it is a cosmetic feature, when it is used - it does indicate that a certain text field is actually a search field to the user. Removing that may cause user pain.

I actually wish this would be standardized. A lot of websites use this pattern (a magnifying glass on one side and a clear button on the other side when text exists) and removing this support will require some work from the developers as well as the designers (which can take a while, or be not as lightweight as you think).

Perhaps just try and standardize this?

☆PhistucK

lgtm1

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[Philip Jägenstedt]

LGTM2, I've stumbled across this a few times and always got an itch to remove it.

I don't think trying to standardize this as-is makes much sense, if it's currently difficult to put an icon of your choosing inside an input element, then that or something even more generic would be the feature to standardize.

[Chris Harrelson]

LGTM3

[TAMURA, Kent]

IMO, we shouldn't standardize it.  Using WebComponents is a right direction.