Macromedia flash 8-developing flash lite 2.x applications User Manual

12

Creating Interactivity and Navigation

If your application contains input text fields, Macromedia recommends that you do not 
disable the focus rectangle, as it provides the only visual clue that an input text field has focus. 
For example, the following image shows an input text field that has the current focus:

If your application contains buttons (with defined over states) and input text fields on the 
same screen, you can set the 

_focusRect

 property to 

false

 in each button’s 

on(rollOver)

 

event handler and set it to 

true

 in each button’s 

on(rollOut)

 handler, as shown in the 

following code example. This causes the focus rectangle to appear when an input text field has 
focus, but not when a button has focus.

// Attach this code to each button on the Stage.
on(rollOver) {

_focusRect = false;

}
on(rollOut) {

_focusRect = true;

}

For more information about using input text fields, see 

Guidelines for using tab navigation

When using tab navigation to create interactivity, you should place at least two objects (input 
text fields, buttons, or a combination) on the screen at the same time. If the screen only 
contains a single button or input text field, the user can’t change the focus and may feel stuck 
in the user interface.

If a screen in your application contains only a single button for user interaction, consider 
detecting a keypress event rather than using button events. For more information, see 

.

Input text field with current focus