focus-lock vs react-focus-lock vs react-focus-trap
Focus Management Libraries Comparison
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What's Focus Management Libraries?

Focus management libraries are essential tools in web development that help manage keyboard focus within applications, particularly for accessibility and user experience. These libraries ensure that focus is trapped within specific elements, preventing users from navigating away unintentionally, which is crucial for modal dialogs, pop-ups, and other interactive components. They enhance accessibility by allowing keyboard users to interact seamlessly with UI elements, ensuring that focus behavior is predictable and consistent across different components and scenarios.

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focus-lock2,312,623174188 kB12 months agoMIT
react-focus-lock2,033,1441,332111 kB1023 days agoMIT
react-focus-trap6,6528114.6 kB10-MIT
Feature Comparison: focus-lock vs react-focus-lock vs react-focus-trap

Framework Compatibility

  • focus-lock:

    focus-lock is a standalone library that can be used with any web framework or vanilla JavaScript. It does not depend on any specific framework, making it versatile for various projects.

  • react-focus-lock:

    react-focus-lock is specifically designed for React applications, leveraging React's component lifecycle and state management to provide a seamless focus management experience.

  • react-focus-trap:

    react-focus-trap is also tailored for React, offering advanced features that cater specifically to the React ecosystem, ensuring optimal performance and integration.

Ease of Use

  • focus-lock:

    focus-lock is straightforward to implement, requiring minimal setup. It allows developers to easily manage focus without extensive configuration, making it suitable for quick implementations.

  • react-focus-lock:

    react-focus-lock provides a simple API that integrates well with React's declarative nature. It allows developers to manage focus with minimal code, making it easy to use for those familiar with React.

  • react-focus-trap:

    react-focus-trap offers a more comprehensive API with additional features, which may require a deeper understanding of its options. While it provides more control, it may have a slightly steeper learning curve compared to the other two.

Accessibility Features

  • focus-lock:

    focus-lock ensures that keyboard users can navigate through interactive elements without losing focus, enhancing accessibility for all users. It provides essential features for managing focus in modals and overlays.

  • react-focus-lock:

    react-focus-lock enhances accessibility by ensuring that focus is trapped within modal dialogs, preventing users from navigating to background content. It is designed with accessibility best practices in mind, making it a great choice for React applications.

  • react-focus-trap:

    react-focus-trap offers advanced accessibility features, including auto-focusing on specific elements and restoring focus after closing a modal. It is built with accessibility as a priority, ensuring that all users can interact effectively with the UI.

Customization Options

  • focus-lock:

    focus-lock provides basic customization options for managing focus behavior, allowing developers to tailor the focus management to their specific needs without overwhelming complexity.

  • react-focus-lock:

    react-focus-lock allows for some customization, such as specifying which elements should receive focus and when, but it maintains a focus on simplicity and ease of use.

  • react-focus-trap:

    react-focus-trap offers extensive customization options, including control over focus behavior, focus restoration, and more, making it suitable for complex applications where precise focus management is required.

Performance

  • focus-lock:

    focus-lock is lightweight and designed for performance, ensuring that it does not introduce significant overhead to your application. It efficiently manages focus without impacting the overall performance of the UI.

  • react-focus-lock:

    react-focus-lock is optimized for React applications, ensuring that focus management is handled efficiently within the React rendering cycle, minimizing performance impacts.

  • react-focus-trap:

    react-focus-trap is designed to handle complex focus scenarios while maintaining performance, but its advanced features may introduce some overhead compared to simpler libraries.

How to Choose: focus-lock vs react-focus-lock vs react-focus-trap
  • focus-lock:

    Choose focus-lock if you need a lightweight, framework-agnostic solution for managing focus within your web applications. It works well with any HTML structure and is ideal for projects where you want to maintain focus control without being tied to a specific framework.

  • react-focus-lock:

    Opt for react-focus-lock if you are building a React application and want a simple, declarative way to manage focus within modal dialogs or other components. This package integrates seamlessly with React's component lifecycle, making it easy to implement focus management without additional boilerplate code.

  • react-focus-trap:

    Select react-focus-trap if you require a more robust solution that provides advanced focus trapping capabilities in React applications. It offers features like auto-focus on mount, focus restoration on unmount, and customizable focus behavior, making it suitable for complex UI interactions.

Similar Npm Packages to focus-lock

focus-lock is a utility for managing focus within a specific part of a web application, ensuring that keyboard navigation remains within designated elements. This is particularly useful for accessibility, modal dialogs, and other interactive components where maintaining focus is crucial for a good user experience. By locking focus, developers can prevent users from accidentally tabbing out of important areas of the application, thus improving usability and accessibility.

While focus-lock provides a solid solution for focus management, there are alternatives available in the React ecosystem that can also help achieve similar functionality. Here are a couple of notable alternatives:

  • react-focus-lock is a React-specific implementation that allows developers to lock focus within a component. It provides a simple API to wrap components and manage focus, ensuring that keyboard navigation stays within the locked area. This library is particularly useful for modals, popups, and other components that require controlled focus behavior. With its straightforward integration into React applications, react-focus-lock is a popular choice for developers looking to enhance accessibility and user experience.

  • react-focus-trap is another library designed to manage focus within a specific area of a React application. It traps the focus within a defined element, preventing users from tabbing out of that area until they perform a specific action (like closing a modal). This library is particularly useful for accessibility in scenarios where focus management is critical, such as in modal dialogs or forms. react-focus-trap offers a flexible API and can be easily integrated into existing React components.

To see how focus-lock compares with react-focus-lock and react-focus-trap, check out the comparison: Comparing focus-lock vs react-focus-lock vs react-focus-trap.

Similar Npm Packages to react-focus-lock

react-focus-lock is a React component that helps manage focus within a specific part of the application, ensuring that keyboard navigation remains intuitive and accessible. This is particularly useful for modal dialogs, popovers, and other overlays where you want to prevent users from interacting with elements outside of the focused area. By locking the focus, react-focus-lock enhances accessibility and improves the user experience for keyboard and screen reader users.

While react-focus-lock provides a solid solution for managing focus, there are alternative libraries in the React ecosystem that also address related concerns:

  • react-aria is a library that provides a set of hooks and components for building accessible user interfaces. It offers a comprehensive approach to accessibility, including focus management, keyboard navigation, and ARIA attributes. If you are looking for a more extensive solution that covers various accessibility aspects beyond just focus management, react-aria is an excellent choice. It helps developers create applications that are compliant with accessibility standards and provides a better experience for all users.
  • react-modal is a widely-used library for creating accessible modal dialogs in React applications. It handles focus management automatically, ensuring that focus is trapped within the modal while it is open. If your primary need is to create modals with built-in accessibility features, react-modal is a great option. It simplifies the process of implementing modals while adhering to accessibility best practices.
  • react-portal is a library that allows you to render components outside of their parent hierarchy, which is particularly useful for modals, tooltips, and overlays. While react-portal does not specifically manage focus, it can be combined with other libraries like react-focus-lock to create accessible overlays. If you need to manage rendering in a different part of the DOM while maintaining focus control, react-portal can be a valuable addition to your toolkit.

To see how these libraries compare, check out the comparison: Comparing react-aria vs react-focus-lock vs react-modal vs react-portal.

README for focus-lock

focus-lock

It is a trap! We got your focus and will not let him out!

NPM

Important - this is a low level package to be used in order to create "focus lock". It does not provide any "lock" capabilities by itself, only helpers you can use to create one

Focus-lock implementations

This is a base package for:

The common use case will look like final realization.

import { moveFocusInside, focusInside } from 'focus-lock';

if (someNode && !focusInside(someNode)) {
  moveFocusInside(someNode, lastActiveFocus /* very important to know */);
}

note that tracking lastActiveFocus is on the end user.

Declarative control

focus-lock provides not only API to be called by some other scripts, but also a way one can leave instructions inside HTML markup to amend focus behavior in a desired way.

These are data-attributes one can add on the elements:

  • control
    • data-focus-lock=[group-name] to create a focus group (scattered focus)
    • data-focus-lock-disabled="disabled" marks such group as disabled and removes from the list. Equal to removing elements from the DOM.
    • data-no-focus-lock focus-lock will ignore/allow focus inside marked area. Focus on this elements will not be managed by focus-lock.
  • autofocus (via moveFocusInside(someNode, null))
    • data-autofocus will autofocus marked element on activation.
    • data-autofocus-inside focus-lock will try to autofocus elements within selected area on activation.
    • data-no-autofocus focus-lock will not autofocus any node within marked area on activation.

These markers are available as import * as markers from 'focus-lock/constants'

Additional API

Get focusable nodes

Returns visible and focusable nodes

import { expandFocusableNodes, getFocusableNodes, getTabbleNodes } from 'focus-lock';

// returns all focusable nodes inside given locations
getFocusableNodes([many, nodes])[0].node.focus();

// returns all nodes reacheable in the "taborder" inside given locations
getTabbleNodes([many, nodes])[0].node.focus();

// returns an "extended information" about focusable nodes inside. To be used for advances cases (react-focus-lock)
expandFocusableNodes(singleNodes);

Programmatic focus management

Allows moving back and forth between focusable/tabbable elements

import { focusNextElement, focusPrevElement } from 'focus-lock';
focusNextElement(document.activeElement, {
  scope: theBoundingDOMNode,
}); // -> next tabbable element

Return focus

Advanced API to return focus (from the Modal) to the last or the next best location

import { captureFocusRestore } from 'focus-lock';
const restore = captureFocusRestore(element);
// ....
restore()?.focus(); // restores focus the the element, or it's siblings in case it no longer exists

WHY?

From MDN Article about accessible dialogs:

  • The dialog must be properly labeled
  • Keyboard focus must be managed correctly

This one is about managing the focus.

I'v got a good article about focus management, dialogs and WAI-ARIA.

Focus fighting

It is possible, that more that one "focus management system" is present on the site. For example, you are using FocusLock for your content, and also using some Modal dialog, with FocusTrap inside.

Both system will try to do their best, and move focus into their managed areas. Stack overflow. Both are dead.

Focus Lock(React-Focus-Lock, Vue-Focus-Lock and so on) implements anti-fighting protection - once the battle is detected focus-lock will surrender(as long there is no way to win this fight).

You may also land a peace by special data attribute - data-no-focus-lock(constants.FOCUS_ALLOW). It will remove focus management from all nested elements, letting you open modals, forms, or use any third party component safely. Focus lock will just do nothing, while focus is on the marked elements.

API

default(topNode, lastNode) (aka setFocus), moves focus inside topNode, keeping in mind that last focus inside was - lastNode

Licence

MIT

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