Modal
The modal component provides a solid foundation for creating dialogs, popovers, lightboxes, or whatever else.
The component renders its children
node in front of a backdrop component.
The Modal
offers important features:
- 💄 Manages modal stacking when one-at-a-time just isn't enough.
- 🔐 Creates a backdrop, for disabling interaction below the modal.
- 🔐 It disables scrolling of the page content while open.
- ♿️ It properly manages focus; moving to the modal content, and keeping it there until the modal is closed.
- ♿️ Adds the appropriate ARIA roles automatically.
- 📦 5 kB gzipped.
Terminology note. The term "modal" is sometimes used to mean "dialog", but this is a misnomer. A Modal window describes parts of a UI. An element is considered modal if it blocks interaction with the rest of the application.
If you are creating a modal dialog, you probably want to use the Dialog component rather than directly using Modal. Modal is a lower-level construct that is leveraged by the following components:
Simple modal
Performance
The content of the modal is lazily mounted into the DOM. It ensures that having many closed modal in your React tree won't slow down your page.
However, creating React elements has a cost too. Consider the following case:
<Modal open={false}>
<Table>
<TableHead>
<TableRow>
<TableCell>Dessert (100g serving)</TableCell>
<TableCell align="right">Calories</TableCell>
<TableCell align="right">Fat (g)</TableCell>
</TableRow>
</TableHead>
<TableBody>
{rows.map(row => (
<TableRow key={row.id}>
<TableCell component="th" scope="row">
{row.name}
</TableCell>
<TableCell align="right">{row.calories}</TableCell>
<TableCell align="right">{row.fat}</TableCell>
</TableRow>
))}
</TableBody>
</Table>
</Modal>
We create a lot of React elements that will never be mounted. It's wasteful 🐢. You can speed up the rendering by moving the modal body into its own component.
<Modal open={false}>
<TableComponent />
</Modal>
This way, you take advantage of React render laziness evaluation.
The TableComponent
render method will only be evaluated when opening the modal.
Accessibility
- Be sure to add
aria-labelledby="id..."
, referencing the modal title, to theModal
. Additionally, you may give a description of your modal with thearia-describedby="id..."
property on theModal
.
<Modal
aria-labelledby="simple-modal-title"
aria-describedby="simple-modal-description"
>
<h2 id="modal-title">
My Title
</h2>
<p id="simple-modal-description">
My Description
</p>
</Modal>
- The WAI-ARIA Authoring Practices 1.1 can help you set the initial focus on the most relevant element, based on your modal content.