Tabbing out of components – focusManager.deactivate()
While building the new tab manager for Fosfr I came across yet another tab ordering glitch - those pesky focus managers. Designed to make focus handling easier, the way they are implemented within components can be a bit of a hassle when defining your own order. If your tabIndex for a component is, say, 5, and tabindex 6 is an object that does not have it's own focusManager (say a textField or MovieClip), the built in focus manager will break out of your indexing and force the tab order back to the root tab item for the WHOLE flash player. With fosfr, that means something in your main or shell swf, typically near the top left if you didnt reorder all your tabs by hand. To fix this (and only do this if you are controlling tabbing yourself), set all of your indexes, and for your components, set component.focusManager.deactivate(). This will allow the custom tabbing yo have set to work.
With Fosfr .8, this will all be a thing of the past as it is all built in now by default. Tab items will map themselves, and, if the order is incorrect, you can override the order yourself via a new method of FosfrSubSWF, setTabOrder(array:Array);
Jeff dePascale is a web and mobile applications professional based in Fairfield County, CT.
