[css] CSS change button style after click

I was wondering if there was a way to change a button's style, in css, after it's been clicked, so not a element:active. Thanks!

This question is related to css button styling

The answer is


What is the code of your button? If it's an a tag, then you could do this:

_x000D_
_x000D_
a {_x000D_
  padding: 5px;_x000D_
  background: green;_x000D_
}_x000D_
a:visited {_x000D_
  background: red;_x000D_
}
_x000D_
<a href="#">A button</a>
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_

Or you could use jQuery to add a class on click, as below:

_x000D_
_x000D_
$("#button").click(function() {_x000D_
  $("#button").addClass('button-clicked');_x000D_
});
_x000D_
.button-clicked {_x000D_
  background: red;_x000D_
}
_x000D_
<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>_x000D_
<button id="button">Button</button>
_x000D_
_x000D_
_x000D_


Try to check outline on button's focus:

button:focus {
    outline: blue auto 5px; 
}

If you have it, just set it to none.


Each link has five different states: link, hover, active, focus and visited.

Link is the normal appearance, hover is when you mouse over, active is the state when it's clicked, focus follows active and visited is the state you end up when you unfocus the recently clicked link.

I'm guessing you want to achieve a different style on either focus or visited, then you can add the following CSS:

a { color: #00c; }
a:visited { #ccc; }
a:focus { #cc0; }

A recommended order in your CSS to not cause any trouble is the following:

a
a:visited { ... }
a:focus { ... }
a:hover { ... }
a:active { ... }

You can use your web browser's developer tools to force the states of the element like this (Chrome->Developer Tools/Inspect Element->Style->Filter :hov): Force state in Chrome Developer Tools


If your button would be an <a> element, you could use the :visited selector.

You are limited however, you can only change:

  • color
  • background-color
  • border-color (and its sub-properties)
  • outline-color
  • The color parts of the fill and stroke properties

I haven't read this article about revisiting the :visited but maybe some smarter people have found more ways to hack it.


An easy way of doing this is to use JavaScript like so:

element.addEventListener('click', (e => {
    e.preventDefault();

    element.style = '<insert CSS here as you would in a style attribute>';
}));

It is possible to do with CSS only by selecting active and focus pseudo element of the button.

button:active{
    background:olive;
}

button:focus{
    background:olive;
}

See codepen: http://codepen.io/fennefoss/pen/Bpqdqx

You could also write a simple jQuery click function which changes the background color.

HTML:

<button class="js-click">Click me!</button>

CSS:

button {
  background: none;
}

JavaScript:

  $( ".js-click" ).click(function() {
    $( ".js-click" ).css('background', 'green');
  });

Check out this codepen: http://codepen.io/fennefoss/pen/pRxrVG