Custom TextInput component loses focus but still contains cursor? - apache-flex

I have a custom TextInput that listens for the FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN and FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT events:
textDisplay.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN, onFocusInHandler);
textDisplay.addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT, onFocusOutHandler);
My onFocusInHandler function basically removes a "promptview" that tells the user to type in a value, with the onFocusOutHandler doing the opposite.
For example, if the TextInput text was backspaced to a blank value and the user clicks out of the TextInput box, it would show a "Please enter a value" light-gray prompt in the TextInput.
This works fine until the user clicks our custom "Clear" button. The clear button sets the text to "", and I can tell the FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT is received because the prompt text is set to visible (its not being set anywhere else). The problem is, the cursor remains in the box as if it still has focus, so if the user immediately starts typing, both the prompt text "Please enter a value" and the user-entered text appears over the gray text, which looks pretty ugly and unreadable.
Why does the TextInput receive the FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT event if it's not actually losing focus? Is there any way I can get around this?

Option 1. Use the Spak TextInput in Flex 4.1 or 4.5. This already provides a promptDisplay by default (as mentioned in the comments)
Option 2. Take a look at the focus-skin. This skin class is usually placed on top of the normal skin. There could exist some focus ambiguity between these two. Try using a custom focus-skin without a textDisplay and clear button.
Option 3. Not only use a focus event to show or hide the prompt, but also look at the content of the TextInput. You don't want to display a prompt when the text is set by binding as wel.

Related

NVDA Screenreader - use Shortcuts to read out next item with current focus on textinputfield

Just as the title says.
I cant find ANYTHING for this particular usecase Online.
This is in context of a website aiming to be AA WCAG 2.0 conform.
I have non-focussable text alongside focussable textinputs inside of a single view.
I can TAB through the focussable textinputs, but I cant read out the textfields inbetween. When I press "arrow down" while having the focus on the textinput I get "empty field" from NVDA. Most shortcuts also unfortunately produce text in the textinputfield instead of executing the associated behavior in NVDA.
Is there any way have the keystrokes being recognized as commands instead of input for the textfield? Is there any keyboard shortcut telling NVDA to behave like this?
Under the hood, NVDA auto switches to Forms mode, so what you're getting is the correct behaviour. if that text is related to the field, then you should use aria-describedby="[id of text]", on the form element.
I wouldn't be looking at anything that changes the default behaviour of how it works, as this will undoubtedly cause issues, for end users.
Could you not put that text in a tooltip, that is only shown when a user tabs to an interactive icon, next to the input (using the aria-describedby attribute too)?

JavaFX combobox set PromptText after selection option

I've set a prompt text for my combobox which appears before selecting an option.
After the user selects an element in the ComboBox I want that text to appear again, but I don't want it to be a ComboBox item.
I tried clearing the selection and setting the prompt text again, but no text is appearing, it's empty.
How do I need to do it?
The javadoc states:
public final void setPromptText(String value)
Sets the value of the property promptText.
Property description:
The ComboBox prompt text to display, or null if no prompt text is displayed. Prompt text is not displayed in all circumstances, it is dependent upon the subclasses of ComboBoxBase to clarify when promptText will be shown. For example, in most cases prompt text will never be shown when a combo box is non-editable (that is, prompt text is only shown when user input is allowed via text input).
https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/javafx/api/javafx/scene/control/ComboBoxBase.html#setPromptText-java.lang.String-

wxPython issue in changing button text

I am working on a wxPython app where I have a button with label text 'Allocate'. Additionally I also have 2 radio options on my app namely 'UnAllocated' and 'Allocated'. When the app launches by default the radio option 'UnAllocated' is selected and the button has label text as 'Allocate'. I have made event driven code to change the label text of the button from 'Allocate' to 'Re-Allocate' upon selecting the radio option 'Allocated'. Uptill now everything is fine and code works as intended.
Now the problem is in the event of radio option 'Allocated' the button label does gets a new label text as 'Re-Allocate' however it is overwriting the previous label text instead of changing. Then as soon as I bring my mouse cursor on the button the text gets refreshed and appears clean and clear. Below is my Code
def rdoAllocated_Click(self, event):
self.btn_Allocate.SetLabelText('Re-Allocate')
def rdoUnAllocated_Click(self, event):
self.btn_Allocate.SetLabelText('Allocate')
is there a way of refreshing the button label text automatically after the change to display clearly the new text instead of unreadable overwritten text.
Here is the image how it looks when getting updated
Try calling self.btn_Allocate.Refresh() This can happen sometimes, depending on platform and widget types. The Refresh simply tells the system to send a paint event in the near future, and will most-likely take care of the problem for you. If not then you may need to call the parent window's Refresh instead.

Getting buttons data into different labels

I'm new. I've determined I cannot make a label "active" and accept keyboard input, so I am trying text fields instead. Seeking advice as to how to kill off the built in keyboard when the user taps the text field, as I want to use my own keyboard (a series of images).
I can determine the active text field (textfield.editing == yes), but when I will kill of the keyboard it seems it also kills off the ability to enter any data into that text field.
Maybe I need to just "hide" the keyboard? Send it off the screen?
OK, I found a way to make this happen. I created some transparent buttons, and laid those over the top of the labels. When the button gets clicked, it designates the label below it should be the active label.
In a separate method, the users text runs thru a few conditions to determine which label (as designated by the transparent button) is active, and the text goes into that label.

Keyboard control of GUI dialogs - Should default button change with focus?

In GUI dialogs, most applications provide for keyboard control as follows:
Enter key - presses the default button. (Default is usually indicated with a bold button border.)
Esc key - presses the Cancel or close button.
Space key - presses widget that currently has keyboard focus.
Tab key - advances focus to next widget.
Question is, when keyboard focus is on a widget that is a button, should the default button be changed to be the one with focus?
I see some issues with this behavior:
The display noise of redrawing buttons to unbold the outline of original default button and rebold the button under focus as being new default.
The Space key is now somewhat redundant with Enter key.
There is no keyboard accelerator to get the normal default button now (Usually the OK button).
However, it seems the trend has been in this direction to change the default button with focus change to another button. What is the rationale for this departure from the early GUIs? It would seem to provide less functionality given there is no way to press the original default button. Did people find that the original model was too complicated for users to understand? I would think keyboard control of dialogs would be a task for advanced users who would have no trouble understanding the model and prefer to have accelerator for current button (Space) and original default button (Enter) at all times.
Note that Qt for one is supporting the change: QPushButton's autoDefault property is responsible for the behavior of changing the default button. By default its value is true. Therefore, you must take extra action to set it to false for all buttons, to prevent them from becoming the default button when focused.
This is not a "departure from the early GUIs", at least not if by "early GUIs", you mean Windows 1.0. The behavior that you describe has been this way since the beginning.
The focused button is always "pushed" when the Enter key is pressed. The default button is only triggered in the following two situations:
The default button has the focus (which it does by default), or
The focus is on a control that does not process Enter key presses (such as a static control, or a single-line textbox that does not have the ES_WANTRETURN style flag set).
The famous Win32 blogger Raymond Chen has a post explaining this behavior (focus specifically on the last two quoted paragraphs):
A dialog box maintains the concept of a "default button" (which is always a pushbutton). The default button is typically drawn with a distinctive look (a heavy outline or a different color) and indicates what action the dialog box will take when you hit Enter. Note that this is not the same as the control that has the focus.
For example, open the Run dialog from the Start menu. Observe that the OK button is the default button; it has a different look from the other buttons. But focus is on the edit control. Your typing goes to the edit control, until you hit Enter; the Enter activates the default button, which is OK.
As you tab through the dialog, observe what happens to the default button. When the dialog box moves focus to a pushbutton, that pushbutton becomes the new default button. But when the dialog box moves focus to something that isn't a pushbutton at all, the OK button resumes its position as the default button.
The dialog manager remebers which control was the default button when the dialog was initially created, and when it moves focus to something that isn't a button, it restores that original button as the default button.
The behavior that I would expect is:
If I press enter when the window just pop up, it should press the default button
If I press tab, I start navigating through the widgets. In this case there are two options:
2.1 I press enter - this event should be delivered to the focused widget. There's no need to change the default button - simply hand the event to the focused widget.
2.2 I press escape. In this case, everything should go back to the state after the window is created.
Notes:
I come from a mixed background - I don't know if I learned this in windows, linux or Mobile OSes! This is just how I expect things to work out.
I don't use the space key (didn't know it's functionality)

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