Re: :click pseudo element

On Jan 29, 2011, at 2:19 PM, thomasin a wrote:

> In order to fully realise the use of the new CSS3 transformation and transition abilities, I think a :click pseudo element needs to be added, identical to :hover but with the click being the trigger instead. I have noticed a lot of people want it, instead reverting to a few short lines of Javascript when instead you could make a CSS and HTML pure site, with the code being a lot simpler and easy to understand too. 
> 
> I hope you've considered this, and will consider it, because it is a Javascript function I use almost every time I program, and it would be a lot easier and useful to have it in CSS as well. 


1) :hover is a pseudo class, not a pseudo element.
2) Pseudo classes (in general) reflect some state or attribute of the element that isn't otherwise (easily/reliably) detectable in CSS. Pseudo elements represent some structure of the document that isn't part of the DOM.
3) Being hovered over is a state, a click is an event.

There is the :active pseudo class which may well apply while something is being clicked on (provided a click "activates" it, which is not defined by CSS currently, though there was work in this direction a while back).

Having said all that, while a :click pseudo class doesn't really work (neither does a ::click pseudo element), there are use cases for triggering transitions and animations on events. We've discussed this also in the past but haven't gotten any good answers yet.

Peter