Source, Visual and Focus Order

About

This article is about the different type of order of HTML element.

There is three kind of order:

• the source order
• the visual order: the order in which they are read
• the tab focus order: the order in which a tab will move the focus from an element to the order

Type

Source

The source order is order of the element in the html document from top to bottom.

This is the default order for the next type of order.

Visual

The visual order is the order as perceived by the eye

This order is determined by the CSS layout.

The principal order is given by how user would read the page.

• For left-to-right language, this is left to right and top to bottom.
• For right-to-left language, the default is from right to left and top to bottom.

Tab

The tab order is the order of interactive element. You can loop through them via the tab key. This is particularly important for:

• people with visual impairing
• or keyboard user.

See What is the Tab Order (Keyboard focus navigation)