[thelist] Direct focus on login

Sarah Sweeney mr.sanders at designshift.com
Mon Nov 22 10:27:07 CST 2004


On 11/22/2004 10:53 AM Andreas Wahlin wrote:
> I want to place the cursor on the userid area of a loginscreen, so
> user's won't have to click on it. Should be easy javascript:
> 
> <body onload="document.getElementById("userid").focus();">
> <input type="text" id="userid" name="userid" />
> </body>
> 
> However, the cursor won't start to blink/being active unltil I click
> once on the actual page, (though that click can be anywhere). This
> defeats the entire purpouse. It's like, sure the input is focused, but
> the window isn't focused, but it is. I have tried refreshing the window
> and I've tried opening a fresh window and paste the url and then go
> there, and nothing makes it so I can start typing directly without first
> clicking somewhere on the window.
> (hope this hasn't been asked before, I did some googling)
> 
> Andreas

I've found the following to work the most consistently in my own testing:

Include this script in the <head>:

function focusField(theForm, theField)
{
   theField.focus();
   theField.select();
}

And this in the body:

<form id="loginForm" name="loginForm">
   <input type="text" name="userid" value="" />
   <script type="text/javascript">
   focusField(document.loginForm,document.loginForm.userid);
   </script>
   ...
</form>

-- 
Sarah Sweeney  ::  Web Developer & Programmer
Portfolio  ::  http://sarah.designshift.com
Blog  ::  http://hardedge.ca


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