toolness/animated-focus-ring

Animate the focus ring so keyboard users have an easier time locating it.

This is a simple drop-in script that builds upon the WICG :focus-ring polyfill by adding support for animating the focus ring as it moves around the page.

The behavior is based upon that of the focus ring on the WebAIM website.

This can be useful for keyboard users who might have a difficult time seeing where their focus ring has moved to when they press tab, which can be particularly hard if focusable elements on the page are spaced far apart.

For a live demonstration, see the demo page.

Prerequisites

• The WICG :focus-ring polyfill.

• The script also requires support for CSS transitions and a few other APIs present in modern browsers; if they are not supported, the script will simply not enable itself (i.e., it will not "crash").

Usage

Add the animated-focus-ring.js script after the focus-ring.js polyfill. Note that the script must be initialized after the polyfill, or else the animation won't take place.

By default, you don't need to do anything else, so long as you have applied your focus styling to the focus-ring class. When the user presses Tab to move the keyboard focus around the page, the focus ring will appear to "move" from one focused element to another.

Customizing behavior

The script works by creating an absolutely-positioned <div> with the focus-ring and focus-ring-overlay classes; this overlay follows position and size of the focused element, as long as it has the focus-ring class. It becomes transparent when it is done "moving" to a new location.

You can customize the speed and appearance by adding CSS rules targeting the focus-ring-overlay class, e.g.:

.focus-ring-overlay {
  background: rgba(0, 0, 255, 0.25);
  transition: top 0.2s, left 0.2s, width 0.2s, height 0.2s, opacity 0.125s;
}

Note that any transitions you define must animate top, left, width, and height at minimum. If you don't do this, the script will define its own CSS transitions, overriding any that you've defined.

animated-focus-ring's Issues

Not working in IE 11

If you would use window.pageYOffset and window.pageXOffset instead of window.scrollY and window.scrollX it would also work in IE 11 👍