I want to know if it's possible to click on an element and then change another element only using Html and CSS and if it is then how.
some thing like this ( btw this code doesn't work ) :
a:active div{
background-color : blue;
}
Without Javascript your options are rather limited.
You have to find a way to toggle the state by a click and be able to express those states in CSS.
Some option might be theese:
using (hidden?) radiobuttons or checkboxes and using their :checked pseudo class in CSS
using anchors and their pseudo classes (like you already attempted to do)
The problem here is that you have to put all your dynamic contents (the stuff you show/hide on click) inside or next to those toggling elements which might be inpractical.
My favorite is the :target pseudo class. When you open the URL "https://something.com#foobar" the element with the id "foobar" is the current target (if it exists). One limitation of this is that there is only one single target per document. You can control the target by clicking on anchors like this:
.dynamic-content {
display: none;
}
#first:target, #second:target {
display: block;
}
<div>
<div id="first" class="dynamic-content">
First dynamic content
Hide
</div>
<div id="second" class="dynamic-content">
Second dynamic content
Hide
</div>
</div>
Show first
Show second
One way ,I use :focus pseudo class. div:focus a {}
I'm working on a dynamic form builder, where the user can add different blocks of content to a page (buttons, text inputs, paragraphs of text, images etc), which they can later publish and it will be a simple HTML form they can use.
For the 'preview' section of this application (where they are adding different blocks of content and modifying the content and look of it), it occurs to me that the simplest way to do this, is to just display the end product HTML itself and that way I'm more or less guaranteed that what is displayed in the preview matches what is displayed in the actual form.
Where this is important is with obscure styling quirks, such as the behaviour of buttons with display:block.
However, I don't want the the preview to be actually interactive like the real form would. That is, I don't want the following behaviours:
Inputs receiving focus and being able to insert content
Buttons having click animations
Clicking links navigating
Default hover styles occuring.
Also, in terms of accessibility, it might be very confusing if there are a bunch of input that don't do anything appearing on the screen.
Is there a browser native/standard way to do this?
My fallback will likely be to disable all of the elements. But this won't work for links for example.
An alternative might be to put an invisible div on top of the form, which captures all of the click events. But I don't like this from an accessibility POV.
Is using the role="presentation" intended for this?
Code Example
As an example here, see some sample code here: https://codepen.io/dwjohnston/pen/qBrGPmr?editors=1111
Now for this, I have the divs with role="button" - These buttons are intended to be clickable, - when you click them the side panel will show content configuration eg, the default value of the input, label, etc.
Already, there is a problem - interactive content is not permitted inside a button.
But also, I shouldn't be able to tab to those controls, (now I can manually add tabindex = "-1", but that's not the complete picture). I don't want to confuse screen readers etc.
INFO
There is an edit to this question that addresses the specific issues OP has with their current implementation. I have left this first part here as my original answer.
I don't want the the preview to be actually interactive like the real form would.
Why? Having the form be interactive would be great for all users (taking into account that some functionality needs to not work fully in a preview).
Let people see what default hover styles look like, what clicking links would do (i.e. click the link and alert says "would navigate to xxx page") etc.
I understand not wanting to be able to navigate to new pages and submit the form (any "save" or "update" actions plus any "navigation" actions) but everything else I believe should be able to work in a preview.
Also, in terms of accessibility, it might be very confusing if there are a bunch of input that don't do anything appearing on the screen.
It would be far more confusing if a preview appeared on screen but then I couldn't navigate to the buttons, links etc.
How would that behave for a screen reader user? i.e. would you hide all elements using aria-hidden="true" (in which case how would they test the page?).
My fallback will likely be to disable all of the elements. But this won't work for links for example.
This is really one of the worst ways you could handle it, disabled inputs generally can't receive focus so keyboard users would suffer when testing.
Plus if some elements in the final production form are disabled until a certain field is filled in (for example) then how could a user test that in your end form?
Also if you intercept the navigation for a link without explaining why the link doesn't work that could also cause confusion. (and yet again could that link open in a new window in "preview" mode if you explain that to end users? Obviously depends if it is a static link etc. but just a thought on a way users can check any custom links point to the right place).
Proposed Solution
I would say you need two versions of the finished form. The "real world" one and the "preview" one.
The HTML can be (read "should be") identical but you need to implement JavaScript handlers to disable the functionality you don't want to be active.
There is nothing wrong with having an editing tool only work with JavaScript if that is one of your concerns, as long as you provide a warning to end users that the tool requires JavaScript to work. (The difference between a publishing tool and an end user experience is you can be much more reliant on JavaScript.)
For example: Let's say you have a <button> that when clicked should add a new row to the form (in the production version of the form) and for whatever reason you do not want this functionality to be active in the preview version.
In that case in the preview / demo version of the form when you click this button an alert could be shown that says "will add a new row to the form".
That way screen reader users and keyboard only users can test the form without you needing to do too much extra work (and can also see if the form has usability issues for keyboard users while they are at it!)
I think this would be the most clear for everybody and a much better user experience.
You just need to think of navigating in and out of preview mode (Esc to close for example) and quick edits (when you preview the form give the option to focus the previously focused element if the forms are particularly long, keyboard only users will thank you for this! The same for when you go back to the edit, put focus back on the last edited item).
Further reading
From an accessibility perspective WCAG isn't what you are looking for in this scenario, Authoring Tool Accessibility Guidelines (ATAG) is.
This is a little known set of guidance on how to create editors, WYSIWYGS etc. etc.
As with all W3C guidance it is a heavy read but if you understand the core principles it will guide you to good decisions and you can always ask here if you need clarity on some of the individual points that aren't clear :-).
EDIT: How could you achieve an accessible interface with the current design
The issues that you have within the codepen you linked and their solutions are as follows:
Stop interactive items receiving focus
As you wrap each element you have correctly diagnosed your biggest issue which is nested interactive elements.
The solution to this is quite straight forward: Give every interactive element a tabindex="-1" as you said. This makes sure they cannot be focused incorrectly.
Make sure the actual wrapper item can be focused and activated
Then we just need to make sure that the wrapper .content-item has tabindex="0" so it is added to the focus order.
We also need to capture the Enter and the Space keys and ensure our panel is activated with them also.
Visual focus indicator
I also added an outline to the wrapper "button" so that visual focus indicators are available.
So that essentially fixes normal keyboard navigation issues, the next issue is how a screen reader will interpret nested buttons, inputs etc.
Screen reader corrections
Here I would also go simple, hide the button, input etc. entirely from a screen reader and instead explain what element is inside.
Effectively we make the button invisible and instead describe the contents of the .content-item.
To hide the element we use aria-hidden="true"
To announce something meaningful we can use some visually-hidden (screen reader only) text inside a <span>. This will be far more robust that using aria-label with such a complex application.
make the application behave well with a mouse
Final challenge - stop mouse events.
Luckily pointer-events: none has really good support and even on the few browsers that don't support it being able to click into an input isn't the end of the world (we have fixed it for keyboard users)
Example with all issues resolved:
This solves all of the issues with your selection method.
Please note it doesn't take into account accessibility errors of the components themselves (for example the <input> having no <label> etc.) but I assume that is just because it is an example.
The only thing you need to work out is how to generate the visually hidden text describing the item and the .content-info "button" action.
document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", function () {
const items = document.getElementsByClassName("content-item");
const rightPanel = document.getElementById('right-panel');
for (let i = 0; i< items.length; i++) {
const item = items[i];
item.addEventListener("click", (e) => {
console.log(e.target);
const id = e.target.dataset.id;
rightPanel.innerHTML = id;
});
// ADDED this to capture the Enter and Space presses on our wrapper button
item.addEventListener("keydown", function(e){
if(e.keyCode == "32" || e.keyCode == "13"){
console.log(e.target);
const id = e.target.dataset.id;
rightPanel.innerHTML = id;
}
});
}
});
.main {
display: flex;
flex-flow: row nowrap;
}
.left {
flex: 1 1 auto;
}
.right {
flex: 1 1 auto;
}
.content-item {
margin-top: 20px;
width: 600;
border: solid 2px blue;
cursor: pointer;
}
/* ADDED a focus indicator so keyboard users know where they are */
.content-item:focus{
outline: 4px solid #333;
}
/* ADDED to stop pointer events reaching the input, button etc. */
input, button{
pointer-events: none;
}
/* ADDED the visually hidden class so we can provide meaningful text to screen reader users */
.visually-hidden {
border: 0;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: absolute !important;
height: 1px;
width: 1px;
overflow: hidden;
clip: rect(1px 1px 1px 1px); /* IE6, IE7 - a 0 height clip, off to the bottom right of the visible 1px box */
clip: rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px); /*maybe deprecated but we need to support legacy browsers */
clip-path: inset(50%); /*modern browsers, clip-path works inwards from each corner*/
white-space: nowrap; /* added line to stop words getting smushed together (as they go onto seperate lines and some screen readers do not understand line feeds as a space */
}
<div class ="main">
<div class ="left">
<!-- Added `tabindex="0"` so the wrapper is focusable by keyboard -->
<div class="content-item" role="button" data-id="item-1" tabindex="0">
<!-- added `aria-hidden="true"` and `tabindex="-1"` to hide the input from screen readers and make sure it cannot be focused by keyboard, I also added `role="presentation"` just for good measure, although it shouldn't be needed. -->
<input type="text" aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" role="presentation">
<!-- Added this span that explains the action that the "content-item button" would perform if clicked. You need to come up with something meaningful for the contents of this -->
<span class="visually-hidden">Edit input [input identifier]</span>
</div>
<div class="content-item" role="button" data-id="item-2" tabindex="0">
<button aria-hidden="true" tabindex="-1" `role="presentation"`> I am a button</button>
<span class="visually-hidden">Edit button [button identifier]</span>
</div>
</div>
<div class ="right" >
<h2> Right panel</h2>
<div id ="right-panel">
</div>
</div>
</div>
You might want to look into the inert attribute. It is not supported by any browser at the moment, but there are polyfill libraries.
The idea is that marking this on any element will make it and all its children non-interactive and invisible for accessibility purposes.
You can read some background and download the library here:
https://github.com/WICG/inert
Try this
$(document).ready(function(){
var demoPage = $('div.demoPage');
demoPage.find('a').attr('href','#');
demoPage.find('button').attr("disabled", true)
})
div {
padding: 20px;
margin: 20px;
background: #eee;
}
<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.2.4/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div class="no-copy">
<p>You can't click me.</p>
</div>
<div class="demoPage">
<a href="www.google.com" readonly="" class="no-copy">
It is a link
</a>
<button> It is a button</button>
</div>
<!--you can do this-->
<input type="text" id="input" disabled>
<script>
document.getElementById('input').disabled = true;
</script>
You can do that very simple by adding some css classes:
<div class="content-item disable-control" role="button" data-id="item-1">
<input type="text" />
</div>
<div class="content-item disable-control" role="button" data-id="item-2">
<button> I am a button</button>
</div>
^^ I added an additional "disable-control" class
.content-item.disable-control * {
pointer-events: none;
cursor: inherit;
user-select: none;
}
.content-item.disable-control *::selection {
background: transparent;
}
Make sure to add some browser-specifix css if needed, e.g.
*::-moz-selection
.. and of course, you can modify my code to apply the class only once (for the whole left pane) and not for each control seperately
Add the disabled attribute to all form elements that you want to disable.
I'm trying to make an editor that inserts special types of elements. I figured out that if you set contenteditable to false on the elements within it, it wont let you type inside it (which is good), but it doesn't put the cursor before or after either, the cursor just disappears.
Is there a way to stop the user from typing inside the element but retain cursor focus when you click on it, as if it's a normal text symbol?
div div {
width: 30px;
height: 30px;
background: red;
display: inline-block;
}
div {background: #ccc}
<div contenteditable="true">
this one will let you type<div></div>inside the red box
</div>
<div contenteditable="true">
this one wont, <div contenteditable="false"></div> but the cursor does nothing when you click inside it now
</div>
<div contenteditable="true">
cant place cursor after this box <div contenteditable="false"></div>
</div>
You also cant click at the end of the text block if the block is last.
Big problem for usability, really would like to fix this.
Facebook has solved this problem, but I can't figure out if it's with js or css:
edit: I've discovered fb changes the caret-color property to black, but it then seems to jump to the position outside of the span after you type, which must be done with js. Still trying to figure out how.
edit: Tried a lot of things, thought I had it working but it still caused other weird problems. I recommend you just don't attempt this and just use an image element or emoji.
Looks like the readonly attribute is the tool for the job and has acceptable support caniuse.
[contenteditable]:read-only {
cursor: not-allowed;
}
css-tricks article is legit.
I've been working on a web component that will hide/reveal content by hovering over a <div>. I've got the functionality working the way I want, but I just realized isn't accessible via tabbing.
I was able to include tabindex="0" role="button" aria-pressed="false" to each of the <div> boxes, which allows you to toggle between each box, but I have no way of revealing the hidden content.
You can find my code here, which demonstrates the issue:
https://codepen.io/ckatz/pen/XQaKdB
Is there a markup I'm missing to allow for someone to hit Enter to show the text?
I added this to your CSS and it worked when i press TAB and move from div to div:
.color:focus {
/* Change the flex-basis so that we know what
size to transition to on hover. Arbitrary,
based on our design/content.
*/
flex-basis: 20em;
}
.color:focus .details {
opacity: 1;
}
I have this problem in Safari and Chrome but not in IE.
When I click a button the mousedown event triggers some kind of CSS rule which makes it slightly wider.
Because of this it drops down onto the next row and the click event is not triggered.
It stays on the next row until the mouse button is released.
I'm working on a large existing site and it's difficult to isolate all the CSS, but I think this could be due to an effect inherent in the browser(s).
Is there a CSS way to stop any effects occuring when the button is clicked?
Thanks for your help.
This is the CSS I have found for :active / :hover.
I don't think this could cause it!
a:hover, a:active
{
text-decoration: none;
}
(The button is an image inside an anchor)
Open your page with Chrome. Right click on the element and select inspect element. On the right handside corner of the inspect element handler, you will see few icons.
Click on the middle one(Which is having a arrow. When you hover it a label will display as "Toggle element State").
Change the element state to active (and to focus if it didn't change anything), and now you will be able to see what css rules are used to apply those changes to your button(It can be a padding or width).
Since now you know what the rule is, you can undo it using another rule (Or using javascript). It's hard to say how to remove the effects without knowing what the effects are.
you can declare a class in css name it for exemple abortmousedowncss :
.abortmousedowncss{
width:yourwidth; !important /* this dont allow any css to overide it ;)*/
}
and you can apply it after with jquery like this :
$('#yourbutton').addClass("abortmousedowncss");