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This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.

I've had many discussions with folks bothered by focus outlines on link and button clicks. "Can we remove these click lines?" was a sentence I often heard. But, at the time, the :focus pseudo-class was the only thing we had, and removing focus outlines entirely would break keyboard accessibility. So we had to push back and fight for proper focus outlines!

Example of an outline border that happens on click followed by the sentence "Can we remove this outline border on click?"

Luckily, the :focus-visible pseudo-class helped out. Using :focus-visible, you could only show outlines when a person navigated links and buttons via the keyboard. Win-win! 💪

But then, a tricky transition period started. How should we work around browsers that don't support the pseudo-class yet? There are two ways.

/* 
  Enable focus styles if 
  :focus-visible is not supported
  
  Note: Before using `@supports selector()` 
        check if its browser support works for you
        https://caniuse.com/mdn-css_at-rules_supports_selector
*/
.button {
  outline: 0;
}

.button:focus-visible {
  outline: 3px solid deepskyblue;
}

@supports not selector(:focus-visible) {
  .button:focus {
    /* Fallback for browsers without :focus-visible support */
    outline: 3px solid deepskyblue;
  }
}

/* 
  Disable outlines if :focus-visible is supported
*/
:focus {
  outline: 3px solid deepskblue;
}

:focus:not(:focus-visible) {
  outline: none;
}

Today in 2022, though, :focus-visible is cross-browser supported.

MDN Compat Data (source)
Browser support info for :focus-visible
chromechrome_androidedgefirefoxfirefox_androidsafarisafari_iossamsunginternet_androidwebview_android
868686858515.415.414.086

And after reading one of Michelle Barker's articles, I learned that all major browsers removed the standard :focus outline and went for :focus-visible instead.

And indeed, when I think about it, I haven't seen click outlines for quite some time.

:focus-visible still matches focused input elements, so they always show outlines and work as usual.

I investigated the user agent stylesheets to find out when these changes were applied. Chrome and Firefox adopted :focus-visible in February 2021 and Safari followed in December 2021.

If you want to look at the default user agent stylesheets. Here they are:

And it's just wonderful; now that :focus-visible is cross-browser supported, and it made its way into the user agent stylesheets, we don't have to worry about it 99% of the time.

The web developer community requested a feature. Browser makers came up with a solution, which we all happily applied. And then, at a later stage, the browsers adopted the solution so that we don't have to deal with it. I love it!

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About Stefan Judis

Frontend nerd with over ten years of experience, freelance dev, "Today I Learned" blogger, conference speaker, and Open Source maintainer.

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