What should pressing 'escape' do with the selected value for select? about open-ui

[jouni]

macOS select controls keep the previously selected option. Both when pressing Esc and when clicking outside the popup. Chrome, Firefox, and Safari all work the same (as the controls inside OS level UIs).

Sidenote: that’s how the <vaadin-select> web component works as well.

In my view, the arrow keys and the mouse cursor is changing the focused item, kind of like simulating tab/shift+tab. Another explicit user action is required to actually activate/select the focused option.

[LJWatson]

In other contexts the escape key is used to, well, escape something, usually without any consequences (dismissing a dialog for example).

That said, when it comes to forms things are much less consistent I think. You can't exit out of a set of radio buttons using escape and have your selection unselected in the process - at least not in Chrome/Firefox on Windows.

Although I'm a habitual Firefox on Windows user, and I'm used to the last selected option remaining selected even when escape is used to exit the select, I have to say that this feels like the wrong outcome. Logically escape should let me exit the select without my actions being registered.

[gregwhitworth]

Thanks for the feedback @jouni and @LJWatson - we discussed this in the last telecon and I forgot to post the agreed upon resolution here.

Resolved: When pressing up or down the select value is not updated to the currently highlighted option

This effectively highlights the functionality that @jouni stated and it brings consistency on the platform.

[gregwhitworth]

Testing a little bit further I decided to look at mouseover and pressing escape and clicking outside to dismiss the popup. This was much more consistent across them as well. So it seems the UAs and libraries that set the value on key up/down treat that the same as click on a given option.

[gregwhitworth]

It's worth noting, that while this issue is specific to escape, effectively it's about changing the state (or dismissing) the select using a way in which normally isn't identified as a user "selecting" the option. This could be clicking/touching outside the window, clicking cancel, etc.

[erikkroes]

The select is very confusing this way. There are differences in behaviour even on the same OS but with different browsers. Most of them have to do with keyboard navigation and/or recognizing the difference between focussing and selecting a value.

[gregwhitworth]

@erikkroes yep, that's what the table shows and what I'm trying for us to get agreement on. I personally find it confusing that moving the arrow key would select something when escape normally means to "cancel". Just to be a bit more thorough and it would be cool if someone can test settings on MacOS, I did the following on Windows:

1. Opened Settings
2. Went to Background
3. Opened Background dropdown
4. Navigated to an option not selected (my currently selected is Picture)
5. Pressed escape

It reverted to Picture, which aligns with what the majority of libraries do but most browsers do not.

[gregwhitworth]

The initial rough draft of events tied to parts (they aren't all there) have landed with this PR: #103

This contains the resolution above as the value of select is only updated on invocation of the option not merely changing focus to the option.