I love the <dialog> element, especially for its built-in / standardised accessibility considerations. I'm looking forward to the day I can roll it without a polyfill (once safari <15.4 drops out of our thresholds).

That said, my one major bugbear with it is the reliance on javascript. Yep, I expect all* users on my sites to arrive with JS enabled. But I also (selfishly?) derive some satisfaction from them not having to. Why can't I control the dialog's open state with CSS or a targeted button?

Would love to learn I'm wrong about this.