01519: set focus to page markup code editing area
Description: When I start to edit a page it does not set focus to the page markup code editing area. There is an attribute for autofocus that should be set. It can be done in JS. Every time I click the edit link I have to click to focus in the edit area instead of just being able to start typing. This also happens when I press the hotkey shift-alt-e - to start editing a page. Why is this not done? gnuzoo
You can enable this, add to config.php this code:if($action == 'edit') {
$InputTags['e_textarea']['autofocus'] = 'autofocus';
}
The textarea also has an access key, by default comma (Alt+Shift+,) --Petko
While using firefox most of the time the autofocus does not work. --gnuzoo
It appears that autofocus not working may be caused by the DOM manipulation performed by PmSyntax, moving the text area inside a container doing the highlighting. Disable PmSyntax and autofocus appears to always work. I forced a refocus after that, but it scrolls the text to the top and puts cursor at the start. This means on Preview or Save&Edit the previous scroll position of the text is lost, and to me this is a bigger problem, especially on mobile devices. Editing with the keyboard only still allows you to use Tab or the accesskey to focus the text area. --Petko
Nevertheless, if there is an autofocus attribute, the wiki administrator requires to autofocus at the start, maybe in this case we should force the refocus. --Petko
I spent several hours of my free time on this, couldn't get a working cross-browser autofocus plus scrolling to the previous edit position. I could add refocus of the area but the previous scroll position of the text is lost. --Petko
The documentation needs to change so that if someone wants to edit a PmWiki page using just the keyboard they MUST type (shift-alt-e) and then (shift-alt-,). --gnuzoo
People can use the Tab key to cycle through focusable links and elements on the page until the Edit link or the text area is focused, and Shift+Tab to cycle backwards if you overshoot. This works in most web pages, PmWiki or not. "MUST" would be false if the visitor uses a browser other than Firefox, or if the access keys have been changed, and they can change per wiki, per language, per group (even per page), or per visitor. Pressing Tab a few times is more reliable to navigate and edit with the keyboard only, and people who mostly use the keyboard to navigate and edit already know this. But you could consider documenting your custom configuration on your own wiki for your editors. --Petko
Petko, as ususal your responses are fantastic. Would it be possible to set focus with JS?
Maybe something like this to set focus after page completely loaded:
$HTMLFooterFmt['editfocus'] = '<script>setTimeout(function(){setfocus("e_textarea");},999)</script>';
--gnuzoo
No, this is already committed to subversion, pub/guiedit/guiedit.js and pub/lib/pmwiki.syntax.js changed, get it from ChangeLog. And keep autofocus as above. --Petko