How to remove the border highlight on an input text element

When an HTML element is 'focused' (currently selected/tabbed into), many browsers (at least Safari and Chrome) will put a blue border around it.

For the layout I am working on, this is distracting and does not look right.

<input type="text" name="user" class="middle" id="user" tabindex="1" />

Firefox does not seem to do this, or at least, will let me control it with:

border: x;

If someone can tell me how IE performs, I would be curious.

Getting Safari to remove this little bit of flare would be nice.

Solution

Before you do that, keep in mind that the focus outline is an accessibility and usability feature; it clues the user into what element is currently focused, and a lot of users depend on it. You need to find some other means to make focus visible.

In your case, try:

input.middle:focus {
    outline-width: 0;
}

Or in general, to affect all basic form elements:

input:focus,
select:focus,
textarea:focus,
button:focus {
    outline: none;
}

In the comments, Noah Whitmore suggested taking this even further to support elements that have the contenteditable attribute set to true (effectively making them a type of input element). The following should target those as well (in CSS3 capable browsers):

[contenteditable="true"]:focus {
    outline: none;
}

Although I wouldn't recommend it, for completeness' sake, you could always disable the focus outline on everything with this:

*:focus {
    outline: none;
}