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Is there a way to find out what's the element focused when using the tab mode navigation ? The elements could be pictures with an id and an href to an url address.
One shortage I noticed is the impossibility of using key event when the cursor mode is set.
[QUOTE=patmarc;409717]Is there a way to find out what's the element focused when using the tab mode navigation ? The elements could be pictures with an id and an href to an url address.
One shortage I noticed is the impossibility of using key event when the cursor mode is set.[/QUOTE]
There is no way to query focus but you can use focus/blur events to track focus changes.
There are some other issues regarding focus in tabbed mode that you will probably run into. First of all focus traversal doesn't always behave the way you'd expect it to based on the spatial layout of elements. Sometimes the focus goes away entirely only to return later after you try to move the focus a bit more. And finally, when commanding focus to some element you can get all kinds of strageness. E.g. if you focus a text field or area you often get crashes when you try to type into the text control after the commanded focus.
Those issues are good to be aware of so you don't spend hours or days trying to fix something that you can't fix in your own code. :)
Peppe
Surely focus management would need some improvements (tabIndex?) to allow building more user-friendly widgets, or we'll finish implementing multiple custom focus management modes..
Pit
I totally agree with Jappi, tab index would be very useful. Presently it's quite tricky to keep track of the tab position. For complex navigation the only option seems to be only in the cursor mode.
Pat
[QUOTE=patmarc;410436]I totally agree with Jappi, tab index would be very useful. Presently it's quite tricky to keep track of the tab position. For complex navigation the only option seems to be only in the cursor mode.
[/QUOTE]
The upcoming Nokia WRTKit user interface toolkit for S60 WRT Widgets will help a lot in this area.
Peppe
Hey Peppe I have the beta version of the WRTKit. Could you develop a bit more in which way the UI toolkit could help me with tab navigation. I didn't take yet the time to study the library and use it, will do that soon :). The examples coming with the WRTKit are quite nice. In the RSS reader example the active menu item loses its focus when scrolling up. Is that a known issue related to the WRT or is it only a bug in the code ?
Thanks for your help
Pat
[QUOTE=patmarc;411012]Hey Peppe I have the beta version of the WRTKit. Could you develop a bit more in which way the UI toolkit could help me with tab navigation. I didn't take yet the time to study the library and use it, will do that soon :). The examples coming with the WRTKit are quite nice. In the RSS reader example the active menu item loses its focus when scrolling up. Is that a known issue related to the WRT or is it only a bug in the code ?
[/QUOTE]
Losing focus is an issue with the WRT and there's nothing you can do about it in your own code. I'm not 100% sure what the circumstances are when it happens, but it appears to happen at least when you have a link that wraps on more than one line and you traverse upwards past it. But it happens in some other situations too so that's not the entire story.
One of the big ideas in the WRTKit is that widget user interfaces that use it will work with no modifications to the code in both the cursor (pointer) and in tab navigation mode. In the WRTKit you deal on the abstraction level of controls and views - not with HTML elements and web pages. Layout and focus management is entirely managed by WRTKit. This also means that the WRTKit manges tracking of focus for you so that you can register listener callbacks that will get called when the focus moves from one control to another.
A lot of the "boilerplate" code that you now have to write yourself over and over again in each widget (that you were rightfully complaining about earlier) is done in the WRTKit for you.
Peppe
Thanks Peppe I'm looking forward to see the improvements of the WRTKit next release. Any idea when we can expect it ?
[QUOTE=peppe@peppe.net;410831]The upcoming Nokia WRTKit user interface toolkit for S60 WRT Widgets will help a lot in this area.
Peppe[/QUOTE]
Where is the documentation on the UI toolkit?
The documentation is available in the Aptana Studio documentation for WRT. Though, I think Nokia is no longer updating this framework.