giving focus to an html element

[Claus Mygind]

I am creating an element dynamically as I load it on the screen. When it was hard coded on the page I had no problem executing the following two lines.

document.getElementById("SEARCH").select();
document.getElementById("SEARCH").focus();

Now I create the element the following way (see below) in my js function followed by the two lines above. I get no error message, but the input field has not received focus.

td.innerHTML =    '<INPUT'+
    ' type="text"'+ 
    ' name="SEARCH"'+ 
    ' id="SEARCH"'+
    ' maxLength='+ cMax + 
    ' size='+ cLength +
    ' onKeyPress="if (isEnter(event)) {'+cInsert+'};"'+
    ' />';

[Claus Mygind]

It appears to be a timing issue.

I am using FireFox v 2.0.0.14

I just moved the two lines into their own function and invoked the setTimeout() method and now it works fine like this:

var TimeoutID = setTimeout("giveSearchFocus()", 50);
 
function giveSearchFocus(){
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").select();
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").focus();
}

[acoder]

Thanks for posting. Yes, that makes sense. It would take a bit of time (even a few milliseconds) for the element to appear in the DOM.

PS. please use [code] tags when posting code. Thanks!

[gits]

It appears to be a timing issue.

I am using FireFox v 2.0.0.14

I just moved the two lines into their own function and invoked the setTimeout() method and now it works fine like this:

var TimeoutID = setTimeout("giveSearchFocus()", 50);
 
function giveSearchFocus(){
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").select();
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").focus();
}

hi ...

just another note since there is a possibility to avoid the eval within the timeout ... just use the function-reference instead of the 'eval-like' parameter -> the following would be sufficent and avoids the eval-operation:

function giveSearchFocus() {
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").select();
    document.getElementById("SEARCH").focus();
}
 
var TimeoutID = setTimeout(giveSearchFocus, 50);
 

kind regards

[Claus Mygind]

Thanks for posting. Yes, that makes sense. It would take a bit of time (even a few milliseconds) for the element to appear in the DOM.

PS. please use code tags when posting code. Thanks!

Sorry for the improper use of code tags not sure how they work, but in the future I will attempt to do that.

some code

this is just my test of using code tags no response necessary.