Sticky user activation across same-origin navigations

[mustaqahmed]

WebKittens

@annevk

Title of the proposal

Sticky user activation across same-origin navigations

URL to the spec

whatwg/html#11454

URL to the spec's repository

https://github.com/whatwg/html

Issue Tracker URL

No response

Explainer URL

No response

TAG Design Review URL

No response

Mozilla standards-positions issue URL

mozilla/standards-positions#1295

WebKit Bugzilla URL

No response

Radar URL

No response

Description

This feature preserves the sticky user activation state after a page navigates to another same-origin page. The lack of user activation in the post-navigation page prevents some use cases like showing virtual keyboards on auto-focus, and this has been a blocker for the developers who want to build MPAs over SPAs.

See discussions here: WICG/view-transitions#239

[annevk]

This seems like a reasonable change to me to provide parity between single-page and multi-page applications. Since it's all tied to the same origin there should be no risk of an increased attack surface, though the bookkeeping is a little involved.