focus Archives - CSS-Tricks

Keyboard-Only Focus Styles

# November 14, 2018 By Chris Coyier

Like Eric Bailey says, if it's interactive, it needs a focus style. Perhaps your best bet? Don't remove the dang outlines that focusable elements have by default. If you're going to rock a button { outline: 0; }, for example, then you'd better do a button:focus { /* something else very obvious visually */ }. I handled a ticket just today where a missing focus style was harming a user who relies on visual focus styles to navigate the web.

But those focus styles are most useful when tabbing or otherwise navigating with a keyboard, and less so when they are triggered by a mouse click. Now we've got :focus-visible! Nelo writes:

TLDR; :focus-visible is the keyboard-only version of :focus.

Also, the W3C proposal mentions that :focus-visible should be preferred over :focus except on elements that expect a keyboard input (e.g. text field, contenteditable).

(more…)

`:focus-visible` and backwards compatibility

# April 8, 2018 By Chris Coyier

Patrick H. Lauke covers the future CSS pseudo class :focus-visible. We're in the early days of browser support, but it aims to solve an awkward situation:

... focus styles can often be undesirable when they are applied as a result of a mouse/pointer interaction. A classic example of this are buttons which trigger a particular action on a page, such as advancing a carousel. While it is important that a keyboard user is able to see when their focus is on the button, it can be confusing for a mouse user to find the look of the button change after they clicked it – making them wonder why the styles “stuck”, or if the state/functionality of the button has somehow changed.

If we use :focus-within instead of :focus, that gives the browser the freedom to not apply focus styles when it determines it's unnecessary, but still does when, for example, the element is tabbed to.

The scary part is "instead of". We can just up and switch with browser support as it is. Not even @supports can help us. But Patrick has some ideas.

(more…)

:focus-visible focus

Focusing on Focus Styles

# March 29, 2018 By Eric Bailey

Not everyone uses a mouse to browse the internet. If you’re reading this post on a smartphone, this is obvious! What’s also worth pointing out is that there are other forms of input that people use to get things done. With these forms of input comes the need for focus styles.

(more…)

accessibility focus

Keeping Parent Visible While Child in :focus

# December 12, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Say we have a <div></div>.

We only want this div to be visible when it's hovered, so:

div:hover { 
  opacity: 1; 
}

We need focus styles as well, for accessibility, so:

div:hover,
div:focus { 
  opacity: 1; 
}

But div's can't be focused on their own, so we'll need:

<div tabindex="0">
</div>

There is content in this div. Not just text, but links as well.

<div tabindex="0">
  <p>This little piggy went to market.</p>
  <a href="#market">Go to market</a>
</div>

This is where it gets tricky.

(more…)

:focus-within accessibility focus

Removing that ugly :focus ring (and keeping it too)

# August 9, 2017 By Chris Coyier

David Gilbertson:

Removing the focus outline is like removing the wheelchair ramp from a school because it doesn't fit in with the aesthetic.

So David shows how you can remove it unless you detect that the user is tabbing, then show it. Essentially you add "user-is-tabbing" class to the body when you detect the tabbing, and use that class to remove the focus styles if it's not there (plus handle the edge cases).

accessibility focus

Focus Styles on Non-Interactive Elements?

# May 2, 2017 By Chris Coyier

Last month, Heather Migliorisi looked at the accessibility of Smooth Scrolling. In order to do smooth scrolling, you:

Check if the clicked link is #jump link
Stop the browser default behavior of jumping immediately to that element on the page
Animate the scrolling to the element the #jump link pointed to

Stopping the browser default behavior is the part that is problematic for accessibility. No longer does the #jump link move focus to element the #jump link pointed to. So Heather added a #4: move focus to the element the #jump link pointed to.

But moving focus through JavaScript isn't possible on every element. Sometimes you need to force that element to be focusable, which she did through setting tabindex="-1".

(more…)

accessibility focus