Rails spinoffs - Aug 2005 - disable ''tab'' key wish for incremental autocomplete of textareas

I''m absolutely in love with the incremental
autocomplete feature in the new scriptaculous.

My one wish would be for some way of disabling the TAB
key to prevent users from being able to tab out of an
autocompleting textarea.  (If they''re using TAB to
select the autocomplete choice they end up tabbing
straight out of the input field if autocomplete
doesn''t find any options).

use case:

User needs to enter N email addresses (N >= 10 or so)
into a textarea.  

User starts typing, autocomplete suggestions pop up,
user moves cursor via arrow keys and hits TAB to
select autocomplete suggestion.

If the user mistakenly hits TAB again, they end up at
the next UI input control.

Suggested behavior:

Add a flag to Autocompleter.Local & Ajax.Autocompleter
that captures the tab key and prevents users from
tabbing out of the control.


Alternate idea (hi TAB two times to escape field):

Possibly a more intuitave solution would be to only
let the user out of the field if they TAB''bed two
times in succession (TAB TAB).

Thoughts?

-San


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On 02/08/2005, at 11:16 AM, sanzbox@yahoo.com wrote:
> I''m absolutely in love with the incremental
> autocomplete feature in the new scriptaculous.
>
> My one wish would be for some way of disabling the TAB
> key to prevent users from being able to tab out of an
> autocompleting textarea.  (If they''re using TAB to
> select the autocomplete choice they end up tabbing
> straight out of the input field if autocomplete
> doesn''t find any options).
Have you looked at the behaviour of autocompleting text fields in the 
various OS''s?

On OSX pressing tab accepts the currently highlighted autocomplete 
suggestion and goes to the next input field.
> use case:
>
> User needs to enter N email addresses (N >= 10 or so)
> into a textarea.
A valid but not overly common usecase.
> User starts typing, autocomplete suggestions pop up,
> user moves cursor via arrow keys and hits TAB to
> select autocomplete suggestion.
Why would they use the tab key to select the suggestion?

The two uses of tab i''m aware of is indentation and moving between 
fields.
> If the user mistakenly hits TAB again, they end up at
> the next UI input control.
Have you actually seen somebody doing this or are you supposing what 
they may do? The two often paint very different pictures.

- tim lucas

True... Many users aren''t even aware of that they can use the Tab key  
to jump between form controls. They just click their way ahead... :)  
Painful to watch them...

Thomas

Am 02.08.2005 um 05:13 schrieb Tim Lucas:
>> If the user mistakenly hits TAB again, they end up at
>> the next UI input control.
>>
>
> Have you actually seen somebody doing this or are you supposing  
> what they may do? The two often paint very different pictures.
>
> - tim lucas
>
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