Entry Text WITHOUT Losing Focus

Aug 21, 2016

Hi all,

Is it possible to detect/trigger entry text content WHILE the user is typing? And not wait until the box loses focus? 

Here's the scenario: submit button is hidden. Text entry is empty. User clicks in the text entry. Text entry gains focus. But, I don't want to show the button yet, since the content is empty. Now, once the user types in a letter, I want the button to show up. If the user deletes the content (backspace), then I want the button to hide again. Also, people may copy-paste content into the box, so I can't rely on key pressed. Thoughts?

Thanks!

 

12 Replies
Jillian Rae

I thought I'd put this here in case anybody finds it useful. This problem was driving me crazy and I didn't like any of the suggested solutions. I solved it using jQuery because I'm still using Storyline 3, but I'm sure you could achieve the same thing in a slightly more long-winded way with straight javascript.

I created an Execute JavaScript trigger to run at timeline start:

$(function() {
  $("input").keyup(function() {
    $(this).blur();
    $(this).focus();
  });
});

Basically it causes the active input element to lose focus very briefly after every keystroke, thereby activating the "control loses focus" trigger, to which you can attach any action you like on a case-by-case basis. In theory the split second loss of focus could cause problems but in practice I have yet to experience any.

Because it works on any unspecified input element you can also put it inside your Slide Master to apply to every slide.

Clare Smith

Hi Joke, 

I found the jQuery written by Jillian quite useful and thought I would contribute by writing it in just javascript.  Here is the code:

let inputs = document.getElementsByTagName('input');

function fnBlur(e) {
    e.target.blur();
    e.target.focus();
}

for (let index = 0; index < inputs.length; ++index) {
    inputs[index].addEventListener("keyup",fnBlur)
}

Yaach Alegria

This is interesting. My use case is because the variables are not set on mobile devices. The input field does not loses focus after pressing my "Next" button on an iPhone 13. This causes my variable (for the input field) to be empty.

The workaround triggering losing focus and then activating it seems a viable solution, but I was inspecting the DOM of my web build and don't see any input elements for my INPUT fields. I only see textareas.

How do you target an specific input element? I don't see IDs or classes.

Rachael Mordecai

See my thread here also. You can simply add code to a JavaScript trigger now that will set any text inputs to lose focus whenever anyone types into them. This will trigger any 'lose focus' triggers you set within Storyline. No JQuery or hacking external files is required.

https://community.articulate.com/discussions/articulate-storyline/change-text-entry-variable-without-control-losing-focus#reply-782198

 

Rachael Mordecai
Yaach Yaach

This is interesting. My use case is because the variables are not set on mobile devices. The input field does not loses focus after pressing my "Next" button on an iPhone 13. This causes my variable (for the input field) to be empty.

The workaround triggering losing focus and then activating it seems a viable solution, but I was inspecting the DOM of my web build and don't see any input elements for my INPUT fields. I only see textareas.

How do you target an specific input element? I don't see IDs or classes.

Yeah, it's not possible to target specific IDs in the DOM but it is possible to target all the 'acc-textinput' classes, which is what my code does (see my reply above). Hope that's helpful.

Rachael Mordecai
Yaach Yaach

Thanks @Gavin. I used your code slightly different. I created a trigger in my "Next" button, that deactivate (blur) the focus for any input or textareas in my slide.

I put this trigger on top so that it is executed first before the intended action of the "Next" button which is to go to the next slide.

Great! Glad it was helpful. :-)