css - <a> with an inner <span> not triggering :active state in IE 8

Question

I want to style the :active state of a button that is represented by an <a> tag. The <a> tag has an inner <span> (beacuse I want to add an icon to this button).

I notice the :active state is triggered properly in everything but Internet Explorer 8. In IE 8, it appears that the area around the <span> (the <a>’s padding) triggers the :active state, but when clicking directly on the text within the <span>, the :active state is not triggered.

Is there a way to fix this without resorting to Javascript?

HTML

<a class="button" href="#">
 <span>Add a link</span>
</a>

CSS

a.button { some styles }
a.button:active { some other styles }

Answer 1

Right, terribly over-complicated solution (and still imperfect), but: if you don’t wrap the link text in the <span>, and instead just use the <span> as a place to put your background image and position it absolutely within the <a>, then the <span> (mostly) stops blocking the :active state.

Test page: http://www.pauldwaite.co.uk/test-pages/2769392/3/

HTML

<a class="button" href="#">
<span></span>Link
</a>

CSS

<style type="text/css">
a.button {
    position: relative;
    padding: 10px;
    color: #c00;
}

a.button:active {
    color: #009;
    font-weight: bold;
}

a.button span {
    position: absolute;
    top: 50%;
    left: 3px;
    margin-top: -2px;
    border: solid 2px #000;
}
</style>

Of course, the area that the <span> covers still traps the click event, so when the user clicks on there, they won’t see the :active state. It is a slight improvement on the previous situation.