On Wed, 29 Sep 1999, Jacqueline Landman Gay wrote:
> Scott Rossi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> > Is there anyway to prevent the text field portion of a combobox button
> > from automatically hiliting when its parent stack becomes active?
>
> I have had to override this behavior on two applications. MetaCard
> automatically selects the first unlocked field it finds whenever the
> card opens. It is almost never the behavior I want (not very Mac-like,)
> and I wish it were optional. Scott, can we get a property setting for
> this so we can turn it off?
I don't know what alternate reality you people are living in but it's
*STANDARD BEHAVIOR* for the first item in a dialog to get the keyboard
focus and show a selection when the dialog opens on *ALL PLATFORMS*.
The only counter examples I could find are in HyperCard and SuperCard,
but maybe having been warped by one of those realities is the
explanation for this penchant for violating the style guides.
If there's a flaw in MetaCard's behavior, it's that it doesn't
automatically select the whole contents of the field when it gets the
focus (though you can of course script this).
> The only solution I've found is to create a transparent dummy field that
> is one pixel wide and give it a lower layer number than any other
> editable object. If possible, hide it under an opaque button or field,
> but keep its locktext set to false. When the card opens, the dummy field
> will be the default selected object and your other fields and buttons
> will remain untouched. If I don't have a suitable object to cover the
> dummy field (sometimes the blinking cursor shows through the cover field
> anyway,) I line up the single-pixel wide field with the edge of a button
> or graphic, so it doesn't show. You can't just hide the dummy field, you
> have to keep it visible since the default selection won't go to a hidden field.
>
> Both my apps start up with a list field for which I want no default
> selection. Actually, in one app, one of the options for the user is to
> proceed without selecting anything. Seeing an item in a list selected
> for no reason is confusing. Is this a Unix convention? Windows? Could
> the Mac version just not do it? It isn't very hard to have a script
> select a line in a field if that's what you want.
You might try try opening the Mac file selection dialog someday and
take a good look at it. Then realize that we should probably make it
*more* difficult to do what you're asking, not less.
Regards,
Scott
> --
> Jacqueline Landman Gay | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> HyperActive Software | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Custom hypermedia solutions | http://www.hyperactivesw.com
> 612.724.1596 | 612.724.1562 - fax
>
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
