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A (terrible?) way to do footnotes in HTML

Terence Eden poked around with a way to do footnotes using the <details>/<summary> elements. I think it’s kind of clever. Rather than a hyperlink that jumps down to explain the footnote elsewhere, the details are right there next to the text. I like that proximity in the code. Plus, you get the native open/close interactivity of the disclosure widget.

It’s got some tricky parts though. The <details> element is block-level, so it needs to become inline to be the footnote, and sized/positioned to look “right.” I think it’s a shame that it won’t sit within a <p> tag, so that makes it impractical for my own usage.

Craig Shoemaker in the comments forked the original to fiddle with the CSS, and that inspired me to do the same.

Rather than display the footnote text itself right inline (which is extra-tricky), I moved that content to a fixed-position location at the bottom of the page:

I’m not 100% convinced it’s a good idea, but I’m also not convinced it’s a terrible one.

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Exploring What the Details and Summary Elements Can Do

Gosh bless the

element. Toss some content inside it and you have an accessible expand-for-more interaction with just about zero work.

See the Pen Simple details. by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Toss a

in there to customize what the expander text says.

See the Pen Multiple Details/Summary by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Works great for FAQs.

There is really no limit to how you can style them. If you don’t like the default focus ring, you can remove that, but make sure to put some kind of styling back.

Here I’ve used a header element for each expandable section, which has a focus state that mimics other interactive elements on the page.

The only browser that doesn’t support this are the Microsoft ones (and Opera Mini which makes sense—it doesn’t really do interactive).

This browser support data is from Caniuse, which has more detail. A number indicates that browser supports the feature at that version and up.

Desktop

ChromeFirefoxIEEdgeSafari
1249No796

Mobile / Tablet

Android ChromeAndroid FirefoxAndroidiOS Safari
868246.0-6.1

But even then, it’s just like all the sections are opened, so it’s not a huge deal:

Wanna style that default triangle? Strangely enough, the standard way to do that is through the list-style properties. But Blink-based browsers haven’t caught up to that yet, so they have a proprietary way to do it. They can be combined though. Here’s an example of replacing it with an image:

summary {
  list-style-image: url(right-arrow.svg);
}

summary::-webkit-details-marker {
  background: url(right-arrow.svg);
  color: transparent;
}

See the Pen Custom Markers on Details/Summary by Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) on CodePen.

Unfortunately, they don’t turn, and there is no way to animate the default triangle either. One idea might be to target the :focus state and swap backgrounds:

See the Pen Custom Markers on Details/Summary by Geoff Graham (@geoffgraham) on CodePen.

But that seems to be limited to WebKit and Blink and, even then, the arrow will return once the item is out of focus even if the item is still expanded.

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Footnote Characters

There are special superset number characters that are sometimes perfect for footnotes. Here they are:

¹ ² ³ ⁴ ⁵ ⁶ ⁷ ⁸ ⁹

I generally prefer to superscript the number myself, like:

<p>This next word<sup>1</sup> has a footnote.</p>

That way I can select it in CSS or JavaScript in case I want to do something special with it.

You'd probably add an anchor link around that as well to link to an ID elsewhere on the page that explains the footnote.

But sometimes it just isn't practical or possible to use HTML as you author a bit of text. As I type, I'm writing in the WordPress Gutenberg editor. I can write in HTML block if I want, but it's much more practical to use the default paragraph blocks, which have options for stuff like bold, italic, and strikethrough, but not for superscript. I don't really wanna convert a block to HTML just to use a superscript number. So, a special Unicode character¹ it is.

  1. Another thing the Gutenberg editor can't do is add an ID to a link, so it's not really practical for me to offer a "jump back to the footnote" link down here. Sad face.

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