Always Show Arrows for Number Input

By  on  

While I enjoy small details that make user interfaces more elegant, I also believe that less is more, especially when it comes to native behavior. One native behavior I dislike is that <input type="number" /> elements only show the increment and decrement arrows when the input is focused. It's a needless focus change -- just show those controls all the time.

So how do we show those controls when the input isn't focused? An easy bit of CSS:

/* ensures the increment/decrement arrows always display */
input[type=number]::-webkit-inner-spin-button, 
input[type=number]::-webkit-outer-spin-button {
  opacity: 1;
}

I appreciate that the browser's native stylesheet doesn't use hidden tricks or privileged code -- it's all just CSS that we can override.

I'm always suspect when it comes to hover effects, as I feel hiding UI elements decreases accessibility no matter what the reason is.

Recent Features

  • By
    5 HTML5 APIs You Didn&#8217;t Know Existed

    When you say or read "HTML5", you half expect exotic dancers and unicorns to walk into the room to the tune of "I'm Sexy and I Know It."  Can you blame us though?  We watched the fundamental APIs stagnate for so long that a basic feature...

  • By
    6 Things You Didn&#8217;t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    Create Digg URLs Using PHP

    Digg recently came out with a sweet new feature that allows users to create Tiny Digg URLs which show a Digg banner at the top allowing easy access to vote for the article from the page. While I love visiting Digg every once in a...

  • By
    Google-Style Element Fading Using MooTools or jQuery

    Google recently introduced an interesting effect to their homepage: the top left and top right navigation items don't display until you move your mouse or leave the search term box. Why? I can only speculate that they want their homepage as...

Discussion

  1. Šime Vidas

    It’s worth mentioning that these styles only apply on desktop. The buttons are not shown in Chrome on Android which is probably better that way since the buttons are so small.

  2. Jules

    We can improve it by not showing the arrows for elements with step=”any”, in which case the input arrows don’t do anything.

    /* ensures the increment/decrement arrows always display as long as step is not 'any' */
    input[type="number"]:not([step="any"])::-webkit-inner-spin-button,
    input[type="number"]:not([step="any"])::-webkit-outer-spin-button {
      opacity: 1;
    }
    

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!