Do you mean that you want to prevent the browser from receiving the
key event?
In Applets, I don't know if Browser handled shortcuts are trapped by
the browser (so they aren't usable inside the Applet), or if having
the focus in the applet if they are available ... I've never tried
this.
I believe the applet gets the event first, but I could be wrong. This
could also vary across different browsers/JVM versions, etc.
Do you mean that you want to set focus to a component when a given
keystroke is entered? e.g. Ctrl-N jumps immediately to the name
field?
Yes, could be useful (including optional usage function keys as
shortcuts)
OK. The best way to handle this is probably to attach a keyboard
listener to each of your various tab panels (as you describe below for
your other use case).
-- attach the same shortcut for some common operations, like
assign <F12> for the Save operation in many different forms where
the
control will be handled by the related element on the visual
panel ...
Sounds like another use case for the action dictionary...
Great, so I have to define my shortcuts in every place i need, like:
"global" shortcuts (menu elements, and other main elements, tabs,
etc),
and "local" shortcuts defined inside the screen, right ?
Right.
And to apply also to first field in any form can i define in the
"global" space ?
Not sure what you mean by this.
- to handle fast and simple focus changing between form elements and
between different forms (tabs, etc) using the tab key
Yes, this is supported, though you may need to attach a key
listener to your tab pane in order to handle the keystrokes for tab
switching. TerraTabPaneSkin doesn't currently do this, though we
could easily add it.
Yes, having it could be great.
Do you remember if there are other elements that need this (like
spinners, accordion, lists, date picker, etc) ?
Spinner already handles key events. After thinking about it more, I'm
not sure if we would want to add platform support for keyboard-
navigating tab panes and accordions, since a) I'm not sure what the
right generalization might be and b) it's easy enough to do in
application code. Either way, you can do this pretty easily.
I'm targeting some new applications for specialized users that works
mainly on Data Entry, so an assumption is that they remember all
shortcuts they need ...
You could always display the shortcut next to the field, or as a
tooltip, or when the user presses some key combination that means
"show me the shortcut keystrokes"...
In last years I've seen (and written) many many times applications
ported to web 1.0 or 2.0 where full time users works not-so-fast as
before ... ok, there have many other advantages
Pivot was designed specifically to address use cases like this
(internal application development, data entry, etc.). It is one of the
things that differentiates Pivot from Flex and Silverlight - we
emphasize the "application" part of RIA, whereas Silverlight tends to
emphasize the "rich" part, and Flex sort of sits in between.
