Question

i found a spotlight plugin for Jquery, but it is not functional in IE.

so is there a way to make the rest of the background fade to a dark color while selected or element of focus remains the same ?

Answer 1

I’m sure there is a cross-browser solution somewhere. Other than that, it might be halfway easy to achieve using a fixed, fullscreen overlay:

.overlay
 { position: fixed;
   background-color: white; 
   opacity: 0.5; /* Add IE opacity here */
   top: 0px; right: 0px; left: 0px; bottom: 0px;
   z-index: 1000;
  }

… fading it in, and giving the focused input element “position: relative” and a z-index of 1001. Not tested but should work cross-browser. There will be problems with Flash elements and such, for which you will find workarounds in lightbox-style scripts.