Click and focus behavior across browsers & OSes

survey.md

Test apparatus: http://jsfiddle.net/hRub4/

(Windows = Windows 8.1 desktop)

• Windows Chrome 39
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
• Windows Firefox 30.0
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
• Windows Internet Explorer 11
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
• Opera 12.12 on Windows 7
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click; can NOT be focused via keyboard tabbing (even with tabindex)
• Opera 12.16 on Mac OS X
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click; requires tabindex to be focused via keyboard tabbing
• Opera 12.16 on Linux
  • Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click; can NOT be focused via keyboard tabbing (even with tabindex)
• Mac OS X Chrome 39
  • Button focuses on click
  • Anchor focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
• Mac OS X Firefox 30.0
  • Button does NOT focus on click (even with tabindex); can be focused via keyboard tabbing
  • Anchor focuses on click; can NOT be focused via keyboard tabbing (even with tabindex)
    • To get keyboard tabbing to work, the user must change System/Firefox preferences (see http://stackoverflow.com/a/11713537); the webpage author can't do anything about it (barring the use of hacky JavaScript)
• Mac OS X Safari 7.0.5
  • Button
    • can be focused by Option+Tab-ing
    • can NOT be focused by clicking (even with tabindex)
  • Anchor can be focused by:
    • Option+Tab-ing
    • Clicking, but ONLY when the anchor has a tabindex
• iOS Safari 7.0.4
  • Button can NOT be focused via tapping (even with tabindex)
  • Anchor can be focused via tapping, but ONLY when the anchor has a tabindex

This data is now mostly documented on MDN:

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/button#Clicking_and_focus (diff)
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/a#Clicking_and_focus (diff)

macOs 11.1 with Firefox 89:
Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
Anchor focuses on click; can NOT be focused via keyboard tabbing

(button click is different than last reported)

macOs 11.1 with Safari 14.0.2 👉 same as last reported
macOs 11.1 with Chrome 91 👉

• Button focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing
• Anchor focuses on click and via keyboard tabbing

MacOs 14.4.1 with Safari 17.4.1 - still needs a tabindex to trigger focus on click - such a shame...
Saved us a lot of debugging or additional JS code though, thanks!