Automatically Tabbing to Next Text Field In Tab Order

[JamesD]

Hi folks,

I have multiple text fields side by side that I have limited each of
their character lengths to 1 and to improve the forms user
friendliness it would be much better if the tabbing would
automatically jump to the next field in the tab order instead of the
current default set up of pressing the tab button to move onto the
next field.
Is this possible?

[Duane Nickull]

Yes.  You have to trap some event though to trigger it.  You can do this with things that have determined or set lengths for fields but my experience has been that more than often, it confuses users as many of them are used to hitting tab and if you make it automatic, they end up tabbing anyways.

You could do this with a telephone number so when you listen to the area code prefix form component, you can test for onChange() then count and if 3 characters are entered, then auto-tab by assigning focus to the next field.

This also is annoying to users so test every conceivable option.  One HTML form that had the same logic pissed me off because I had made a mistake in my area code prefix and every time I put the cursor back into the field to change it, it detected a change and sent it to the next field.  In short, I bailed on a form I had spent a good 4-5 minutes filling our and wanted to strangle the form designer.

Be careful with this one.

Duane

--
**********************************************************************
Duane Nickull, Vancouver, BC Canada
Senior Technical Evangelist - Adobe LiveCycle ES and Enterprise
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[JamesD]

Your right Duane it's probably more of a pain in the ass than it's
worth and I can definately work around it. It's good to know its
possible though. Thanks buddy

On Mar 10, 4:31 pm, Duane Nickull <dnick...@adobe.com> wrote:
> Yes.  You have to trap some event though to trigger it.  You can do this with things that have determined or set lengths for fields but my experience has been that more than often, it confuses users as many of them are used to hitting tab and if you make it automatic, they end up tabbing anyways.
>
> You could do this with a telephone number so when you listen to the area code prefix form component, you can test for onChange() then count and if 3 characters are entered, then auto-tab by assigning focus to the next field.
>
> This also is annoying to users so test every conceivable option.  One HTML form that had the same logic pissed me off because I had made a mistake in my area code prefix and every time I put the cursor back into the field to change it, it detected a change and sent it to the next field.  In short, I bailed on a form I had spent a good 4-5 minutes filling our and wanted to strangle the form designer.
>
> Be careful with this one.
>
> Duane
>

> On 10/03/09 9:23 AM, "JamesD" <donnelly.ja...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Hi folks,
>
> I have multiple text fields side by side that I have limited each of
> their character lengths to 1 and to improve the forms user
> friendliness it would be much better if the tabbing would
> automatically jump to the next field in the tab order instead of the
> current default set up of pressing the tab button to move onto the
> next field.
> Is this possible?
>
> --
> **********************************************************************
> Duane Nickull, Vancouver, BC Canada
> Senior Technical Evangelist - Adobe LiveCycle ES and Enterprise
> Duane's World TV Show -http://tv.adobe.com/#pg+1537
> Blog -http://technoracle.blogspot.com

> Twitter -http://twitter.com/duanechaos