Use a:active to select a hyperlink when it receives focus in IE.
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title></title> <style type="text/css"> a { padding: 3px 10px; margin: 20px 10px; text-decoration: none; display: block; width: 260px; border-left: 1px solid #ccc; border-right: 2px solid black; border-top: 1px solid #ccc; border-bottom: 2px solid black; } a:active{ color: green; background-color: #bbb; } </style> </head> <body> <p> <a href="http://www.java2s.com">a:active</a> </p> </body> </html>