[thelist] keyboard shortcuts and auto-focus on forms

M. Seyon evoltlist at delime.com
Thu Feb 24 10:59:30 CST 2005


Just came across this interesting quirk, Using Opera 7.5 Win2k.

Common knowledge - lots of sites use javascript to automatically apply 
focus to a form field so you can start entering info without selecting the 
field. Especially useful on search engine pages. Yahoo and Google both do it.

Less common knowledge - with some browsers you can use keyboard shortcuts 
to, among other things, scale the content in the window. +/- to 
increase/decrease in 10% increments in Opera.

On Google's site, you can do this just fine, hold down + key to repeatedly 
increment the size.

On Yahoo's site, after the first keypress focus is once again given to the 
form field, so it resizes once, then you get a series of "+++++" appearing 
in the field.

I'm sure it's something to do with the specific javascript used to achieve 
the effect. Personally I think Google's implementation is better, as it 
doesn't interrupt me using my keyboard shortcuts.

Perhaps someone who does extensive javascript work will find this useful to 
ponder.

regards.
-marc

--
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http://www.playyuhself.com/


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