I've noticed sometimes the keyboard tabbing for focus gets messed up. In this case I am using a Blueprint Dialog component which contains a form to be submitted. The form is built with Redux Form wrapped Blueprint input components. When the dialog first opens I can tab to the concentration field of the form. The next two tabs focus hidden elements (see first image below). Then the "x" to close the dialog is focused, then the concentration field is focused again, and finally I can tab and focus the remaining fields and buttons.
Any tips on how to improve this? Its not clear to me why the pt-overlay-backdrop nor the pt-overlay-content would ever want to be tabbed into. I see they both have tabindex="0".. maybe that should be -1?
Thanks!
Set Dialog's autoFocus to false can fix this issue.
Related
I'm working on adding support in my app for full-height sidebars, as introduced in macOS 11.
The trick is, when the window tab bar is visible, I want to turn the full-height sidebar off. The two don't mix well when the sidebar content is different in each window, as it is in my app. See Xcode for an example of what I want to do (View > Show Window Tab Bar). See Preview for an example of what I want to avoid (open two multi-page PDFs and put them in a single tabbed window).
What's working:
I observe the window's tabbedWindows property, and toggle the fullSizeContentView flag in its styleMask accordingly. Thus the window's style updates as needed when I hide and show the tab bar.
What's not working: I need to have a sidebarTrackingSeparator item in my toolbar in order to have some items above the sidebar. But when fullSizeContentView is off, that item appears as a plain separator. I don't want it to be visible at all in that state.
There isn't a straightforward way to hide a toolbar item, especially if it doesn't have a view, which it turns out this one doesn't.
I tried removing the separator item and re-adding it when the window state toggles, but that leads to Cocoa throwing exceptions, complaining that only one tracking item can be registered at a time. This would seem to be a bug, but Xcode manages it somehow.
So how can I properly toggle my window and toolbar state without having that visible separator?
It looks like I've solved the problem by saving the separator item when I see it in toolbarWillAddItem, and then returning it from toolbar(_:itemForItemIdentifier:willBeInsertedIntoToolbar:) to avoid having a new instance created. That way, removing and re-adding the item works without having exceptions thrown.
The last little snag was to not remove and re-add the separator blindly. The window state may have been preserved across app launches, so I needed to not make assumptions about how the window would initially appear.
Inside a MFC dialog, I have 2 overlapping rows of text boxes (what user can see is only one row). when I clicked a button, i shifted down the row at bottom, so now user can see both rows.
The problem is if I have some data loaded in DoDataExchange() for the text boxes, I wouldn't be able to see them showing when the dialog boots up. But when I click inside the text box, the data shows.
I want to know what exactly happen when I clicked a UI? What drawing functions are invoked at backgrounds? So I can fix my problem.
Thank you.
ZQ
Nothing is drawn when you click, maybe you are seeing an Invalidate() being triggered for some reason that redraws the text boxes. Or maybe the parent control (dialog, I assume) doesn't have WS_CLIPCHILDREN set, or some other funny things are happening with the WS_CLIPXXX flags (they're somewhat of a black art).
More to the point, use Spy++ to check what 'happens' when you click - i.e. the messages that are posted at each point in time.
Does anyone know why Labels and Frames (and possibly other controls) have a TabIndex property in VB6? Is there some use for it; some feature of GUI programming I ought to be incorporating in my applications (that I am blissfully unaware of)?
To confirm what Cody said in the comments. The VB6 manual entry for TabIndex says:
Controls that can't receive the focus (Frame and Label controls) remain in the tab order but are skipped during tabbing.
but
If you press the access key for a Frame or Label control, the focus moves to the next control in the tab order that can receive the focus.
TabIndex is the property used to determine the sequence of focused controls when user presses TAB key.
If control with TabIndex=5 is focused and user presses TAB, control with TabIndex=6 will take focus.
Is there a method such that a user can click on the form itself, and in doing so remove focus from whatever object (textbox, combobox, etc) currently has it? Basically, can focus be uniformly removed from everything at once?
Setting the focus to the form itself does not work.
I thought about doing the old "hide a placeholder button behind another object" trick, but I'm really not a fan of that.
Thanks!
In VB6 a PictureBox can get focus, even if it does not contain any control.
In your case you can put a PictureBox with TabStop false, BorderStyle set to 0, TabIndex set to 0 behind every other control but not containing any focusable control and stretch it to ScaleWidth by ScaleHeight at run-time.
You have to put the labels and any windowless control in this background PictureBox too.
This way when the user clicks "on the form" the focus will "go away". With "no focus" Tab key will focus first control (the one with TabIndex set to 1).
When a form is active, something generally HAS to have focus. It sounds like you're just wanting to not "show" that a particular control has focus.
If that's the case, it's going to depend on the controls. Some have properties that control whether or not the specific control "indicates" its focus in some way.
But the built in Windows controls will always show their focus state unless you subclass them
Given this problem. I'd probably put a button on the form , then move it offscreen when the form loads. Make sure it's not a tab stop, but then when you want to hide focus, set focus specifically to the button, make sure the button is STILL in the tab order, even though it's not a tab stop, so the user can press tab while on the button and end up somewhere logical.
Don't have VB handy, but could you simply remove TabStop?
for x = 1 to me.Controls.count
me.Controls(x).TabStop = 0
next
I have a picturebox and a control on a form.
Private Sub cmdButton_Click
PictureBox.setFocus
Exit sub
End sub
The control doesn't change its appearance, nor does the picturebox.
Of course you'll need to add an If-Then clause if you want the control to respond normally sometimes.
I have the following set of controls.
Scenario 1:
If you select one of the first 3 radio buttons and click enter, focus will jump to the Passport Number text box. If the user selects "Other", the "Other, Please Specify" textbox is enabled and, for convenience, screen focus (the cursor is moved) to that textbox.
Scenario 2:
The "specify Other" text box is hidden until the user clicks on the Other Radio button. Upon doing so, the textbox is made visible and the cursor is placed in this textbox.
Which scenario do you feel is a better approach? Perhaps you have another variation? Please state your reasoning.
I would also appreciate it if you could make a generalized statement as to when hiding is better than disabling or vice versa, but I am also interested in this particular example.
Thanks.
Afetrthought: Perhaps, in the 2nd example, the "Please Specify" text would only appear after the user has selected the 'Other' radio button.
I find that changing the UI by hiding/showing controls can be quite jarring and confusing to the user. Go with option 1 and enable the textbox when the appropriate radio button is checked.
My initial impression is that number 1 is neater.
it allows for a clear design of the GUI (there wouldnt be inexplicable empty spaces in the input screen)
it makes the colon after the `(Please Specify)" request meaningful.
The only time I advocate hiding UI elements is when it improves the UI. If it's just 'different' rather than 'measurably better', don't do it.
Users may be put off by the fact that the "other" option seems to require that you specify something, yet the UI gives no clue that you can do that.
I would consider number 2... Hiding the text box will make it easier for the majority of people to run their eye down the page (each horizontal line creates a barrier for the eye). When someone selects 'other' a text box could fade in with the words 'please specify' in the box. The form will seem to respond to the users input.