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When reading Is a lightbox considered a dialog box? (and writing my answer) I realized our tag for "modal" stuff is . As you'll note in my answer, I don't agree that all modal things are dialogs; instead there are (an existing tag) and there are .

Modality is a different issue from dialog-ness. Dialogs can be non-modal, and not all modal interaction elements fit the classic "Alert: yes/no" format of the traditional dialog. In my opinion we should keep the ideas distinct and just tag and separately.

Should we rename the that to ? I added the pluralization since it seems like we prefer plural noun tags.

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Presumably we'd then have to retag the ones which were actually talking about dialog? Can't imagine it will take very long, but worth noting. – dhmholley Oct 2 '12 at 16:21
A lot of people refer to these as modal-dialogs though. I would use both – Matt Rockwell Oct 9 '12 at 18:33
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@mattrockwell Even if people refer to them as modal-dialogs, should we not promote correct usage of terminology here? – Rich Feb 2 at 6:09
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But you can have modal dialogs as well as modal windows. Would adding "modal" tag be better? – norabora Apr 30 at 23:35
@norabora just modal to cover both cases would be fine with me. I don't think there's any relevant distinction between the two that isn't covered by adding the dialog tag separately where needed – Ben Brocka♦ May 1 at 12:39

1 Answer

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Yes, it's a better label since it covers the whole window and can't be moved like a dialogue (in most cases).

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Well, no, not necessarily, many modal windows/boxes/whatever can be moved or dragged sometimes...but it's not an essential/antithetical property of the element anyway. – Ben Brocka♦ Oct 2 '12 at 18:59

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