I have been looking into how you could use Javascript to direct focus to a Flash movie. I've seen it discussed on Stack Overflow and other sites and it seems you cannot do this reliably except in Internet Explorer. I am just calling the .focus() method on a Flash object via Javascript.
It does in fact work in Internet Explorer, but I don't like its behavior on Firefox or other browsers. Basically, I have a username/password login field INSIDE my Flash movie, and I want to give it focus when the Flash movie loads, so you can start typing your username immediately, without having to first click the field.
The problem with Firefox is that not only does it not set the focus, you can SEE a blinking cursor inside the field in Flash, which really indicates that the field has focus. However, you still have to click.
This is counterproductive on Firefox. I would rather not even attempt to set the focus if this is the behavior. I could of course check what browser is in use and determine whether to even call .focus(), but this functionality may change in later versions of Firefox. I'd love to have a better solution, that would:
- Remember the current focus before the Flash movie is dynamically added to the page (this is how I do it, I cannot display the movie as part of the initial page load).
- Attempt to set focus to the Flash movie.
- Check if the focus WAS properly set, so I can expect that the Flash movie is actually receiving keystrokes without an additional click.
- If focus was not set, revert to whatever was focused before the Flash movie was loaded.
I am not sure how (or if) this can be done but I'd love to find out. I think document.activeElement may be useful, but I was not able to get very far with that. Thanks for any help!