Open UI

Toolbar Element (Explainer)

Table of Contents

Introduction

A toolbar is a common user interface pattern used to provide quick access to a group of commands, represented using controls such as press buttons, menus and other such controls.

This proposal introduces a new <toolbar> element. The <toolbar> will:

  • Represent a grouping of controls (e.g. buttons, select boxes, press buttons).
  • Provide the correct implicit ARIA role and keyboard interaction model out of the box.
  • Allow web developers to create consistent, accessible toolbars without re-implementing ARIA patterns.

Use cases:

  • The formatting toolbar in a document editor (bold, italic, underline, font family).
  • The main command toolbar in a drawing or photo editing app.
  • A simple toolbar with a search field and filter buttons in a catalogue.

New <toolbar> element

<toolbar>

  • Represents a group of controls.
  • Provides implicit role="toolbar".
  • Toolbars are displayed horizontally by default.
  • Provides correct keyboard navigation behaviour.

Keyboard behaviour

This element will implicitly provide the same behaviour as a toolbar focusgroup:

  • It will contain a single tab-stop.
  • Left/Right arrow-keys can be used to navigate between focusable children.

Additionally, home and end keys can be used to jump to the beginning or end of the toolbar.

There are many types of built-in HTML controls that already have existing keyboard behavior, we should ensure that these don’t lead to keyboard traps where users can’t escape.

By default the same key conflict behaviour as focusgroup applies. It’s possible there’s more that can be done specific to toolbars.

Styling

We propose this element should not support the CSS appearance property and should just have a “base” appearance by default, like the <dialog> element.

Proposed UA Styles: Issue 1402

toolbar {
  box-sizing: border-box;
  background-color: transparent;
  border: 1px solid currentColor;

  display: inline-flex;
  flex-direction: row;
  inline-size: max-content;
  gap: 0.25em;
  padding: 0.25em;
}

Questions?

What about vertical toolbars?

This is tracked in Issue 1401. There’s multiple ways we could do this.

Perhaps supporting an orientation attribute, that would allow controlling the directionality of the arrow keys, as well as setting aria-orientation appropriately, would solve this? Issue 1201

Extra questions

  • Does <toolbar> support separators? Issue 1400
  • Toolbars generally should be labelled, it is a MUST if there are multiple on a page. Should we support this via HTML, or still rely on aria? Issue 1399

Examples

Google Docs

A toolbar element as seen in Google Docs.

Code Example:

<toolbar aria-label="Main">
 <button id="undoButton" aria-label="Undo"><img src="..." alt=""></button>
 <button id="redoButton" aria-label="Redo"><img src="..." alt=""></button>
 <button id="printButton" aria-label="Print"><img src="..." alt=""></button>
 <input id="zoomSelect" list="zoom" aria-label="Zoom">
 ...
</toolbar>
<datalist id="zoom">
  <option>Fit</option>
  <option>50%</option>
  ...
</datalist>

<script>
undoButton.addEventListener("click", () => {
  undo();
});
</script>

GitHub

A toolbar element as seen in GitHub's markdown editor.

Future enhancements

We envision more advanced capabilities in the future that could enhance the usability of the toolbar designed in this explainer, but that are not necessarily in scope for our initial proposal.

One such capability is keyboard shortcuts to invoke controls within the toolbar; see #1225. We envision that this could be provided by a more advanced version of the accesskey primitive, that would provide customisable key commands that apply outside the scope of our proposal.

Reading List

ARIA guidelines

Relevant ARIA issues

APG pattern recommendations (note these are not guidelines)

Blog posts from accessibility community

  • Fill as and when they’re discovered

Blog posts for Design System

Issues / Discussions

This section links to all of the relevant discussions and issues related to toolbar:

OpenUI