[whatwg] scripts that remove focus from links during document navigation

[Ian Hickson]

On Wed, 20 Sep 2006, Hallvord R M Steen wrote:
> 
> Opera has a serious usability problem for keyboard- and device-users 
> when pages do the following:
> 
> <a href="" onfocus="this.blur()">
> 
> This coding is very common because IE adds a small outline border to 
> focused links. Authors who do not like this will blur links when they 
> are activated to avoid this cosmetic issue. (Mea culpa: I've done 
> exactly this myself in sites I coded as a newbie, for that very reason.)
> 
> In Opera, when keyboard navigation hits this link, focus is removed. 
> Thus the link can not be activated from the keyboard and navigation may 
> have to start from the top of the document again.
> 
> We need some prose in a spec that allows a user agent to ignore blur() 
> for accessibility reasons.

Done in HTML5, which seems to be the only spec that actually defines 
blur() in any sort of useful detail now. :-)

-- 
Ian Hickson               U+1047E                )\._.,--....,'``.    fL
http://ln.hixie.ch/       U+263A                /,   _.. \   _\  ;`._ ,.
Things that are impossible just take longer.   `._.-(,_..'--(,_..'`-.;.'