The most annoying part of building an overlay (dropdown, tooltip, notification) has always been the z-index war and hand-rolling "click outside to close." No z-index value was safe if an ancestor used `overflow:hidden` or `transform` — it would still get clipped — and light-dismiss meant attaching and detaching a document click listener yourself.
Add the `popover` attribute to an element and it renders in the top layer — above the viewport, above every other stacking context. Give the trigger button `popovertarget="id"` and clicking opens/closes it, with outside-click and Esc handled by the browser. To control it from JS, call `el.showPopover()` / `hidePopover()` / `togglePopover()`.
Check caniuse/MDN baseline for support. Without it, you're back to `position:fixed` plus manual z-index and a document click listener — the fallback path in the demo below is the minimal version of that.
When to use
Dropdowns, notifications, simple dialogs — anything that needs to float above everything else and close on outside click.