When Do Elements Take the Focus?

I agree strongly with James's conclusion: "I think all focusable elements should take the focus by any means of interaction, and should always show a native focus outline when they do"

I've taken (thanks to Stylebot) to restyling websites, and high up in my list of changes is to take the simple step of making links evident and responsive: I set a link color, I set an underline text-decoration on hover, and I invert foreground and background when clicked (this helps especially when trying to distinguish adjacent links).

Which gets away from the outline element issue noted here, but just getting a web site to show affordance is a huge UI/UX gripe of mine in recent years.