Create a non-modal dialog

[jessegreenberg]

PhET needs a non-modal Dialog component. It has come up a lot over the years:

• Non-modal Dialog needed.  #882
• problems with non-modal dialogs joist#293
• improve Dialog #433
• Absorption and Emission panel dialog could use some improvement models-of-the-hydrogen-atom#86
• mean-share-and-balance
• natural-selection

#433 describes features that are important for non-modal dialogs.

This issue describes accessibility behaviors that are important for non-modal dialogs.

This has come up several times in the last few months so adding to the developer priorities board.

[AgustinVallejo]

It was discussed on Nov 18, 2024 that this should be prioritized. And if a future sim needs it, the priority should be even higher? There's also an idea to add a 'Deprecated' annotation in the following sims, which created a non-modal panel:

• Mean Share and Balance (MeanInfoPanel)

[jessegreenberg]

We discussed during meeting that adding @deprecated is a way to track cases where a custom solution is being used, so that this is not forgotten.

I added it to the above list of cases.

We voted on a priority for this task in the "Developer Priorities" board. But this will also be motivated by the next sim that needs this component.

[samreid]

This can be accomplished with Panel, but the main point is to put it in the top layer in joist, maybe make it draggable. Make sure keyboard support and voicing acts appropriately. Indicate simulations where this would be used. Update the code in Dialog so it can be used as modal or non-modal.

[pixelzoom]

I mentioned in 2/17/2025 dev meeting that this is creating technical debt. When needed, developers are faking a non-modal dialog, typically by using a draggable Panel or other Node, and with various implementations. Then we try to make the PhET-iO API look like a dialog, again with various implementations. And for description, we have an acccessible modal Dialog, but can't take advantage of that, and again have to invent a description implementation.

[pixelzoom]

In MOTHA, which supports Tier 1 description, trying to fake a non-modal dialog using a Panel has proven to be real painpoint. In addition to faking the PhET-iO API, we also had to deal with faking description/voicing behavior. And that has been trouble: see phetsims/models-of-the-hydrogen-atom#149.

If Tier 1 description is a priority for sims going forward, PhET should consider prioritizing common-code support for non-modal dialogs.