Position Mouse Curser - RoR way

Rails
1

Does anyone know how to set the mouse curser in a text box/area. For
example:

When a user is presented with a form - I want the mouse curser
positioned in the first form item.

Another example - I want to create a wiki-style text area where users
can add formatting by clicking a button (think TRAC) When a user clicks
the bold button, for example, the bold markup will display in the text
area with the mouse positioned between the mark-up.

Know how to do this? Thanks in advance.

2

Kim wrote:

Does anyone know how to set the mouse curser in a text box/area. For
example:

When a user is presented with a form - I want the mouse curser
positioned in the first form item.

Another example - I want to create a wiki-style text area where users
can add formatting by clicking a button (think TRAC) When a user clicks
the bold button, for example, the bold markup will display in the text
area with the mouse positioned between the mark-up.

Know how to do this? Thanks in advance.

Rails has no built in way of doing this (that I know of), but it is
easily achieved with simple javasripts.

3

The RoR way of doing this is not to do it. Users would hate it, and
it’s very not-RoR.

On Jan 20, 2:33 am, Andrew S. [email protected]

4

why would you need the pointer positioned over a form field? i can’t
see how that would serve any kind of purpose.

now, if you really mean you want the first form element to have focus,
that’s quite different and is used quite often.

if using the prototype library, just give your form input elements an
id (if you are using rails helper methods to generate input fields,
this will already be done for you)

make sure to put this somewhere after the form itself.

for extra credit, add a class name to your fields and when the field
is focused it will stand out more.

in your css add something like

.field:focus {
background-color: #ffffcc;
}

i believe that will work across all browsers ( i know safari and
firefox handle it ok ).

5

Yes, what I want is to have the curser pre-positioned in the first
field - focus will do it.

Thanks

6

make sure to put this somewhere after the form itself.

I can not get this to work - can you provide an example? Can’t I put
this in the JS files so it does not have to be on every form, and then
call the field id in each form that I want to have the focus a common
name?

Thanks, K

7

example:

<%= javascript_include_tag "prototype %>

On 1/22/07, Kim [email protected] wrote:

call the field id in each form that I want to have the focus a common
name?

there’s nothing stopping you from doing that, no. but i fail to see
the reason why. you still have to have a line of javascript in your
template in order to actually focus the element. if you put it in a
separate file, that file has to be loaded off the server, vs. having
it inline. also (not sure about this), i’d be concerned about how the
browser loads external files and to when they are interpreted. ie, is
it going to load/interpret that js file prior to rendering the form?

focus.js
---- snip -----
Field.focus(‘element_id’);
---- snip -----

template
---- snip -----

8

Thanks for the example - but not applicable - I am not using prototype.
Here is what I have tried - still not working.

start_form_tag :action => ‘register’, :id => @user
Email
text_field ‘user’, ‘email’
submit_tag ‘Register’
end_form_tag

<script type="text/javascript">
    Field.focus('user_email');
</script>
9

well your choices are:

  1. use prototype javascript library (it’s installed as a part of every
    new rails project)
  2. use the base javascript functionality to apply focus to a form
    element. there are a myriad of samples/tutorials on the web at your
    disposal.