iPad HTML Focus

Question

I have an issue with focusing a text field on the iPad. Where I use:

$(document).bind("click",function(event) {
    alert('click');
    focusTextArea();
});

The focus is set to the text area, and a keyboard appears. However when called with touchend, focusTextArea is not called and the keyboard is not made visible. My focusTextArea function is:

function focusTextArea() {
    $('#textArea').focus();
}

Does anybody know why this occurs, and how I might be able to get this to work?

TIA,

Adam

Solution

Unfortunately, focusing is not possible with the iPad. The only way the focus will be placed in the desired field is when the user 'clicks' on the desired field.

Update 2015-01-08:

As explained in this answer by Matt:

... iOS will only allow focus to be triggered on other elements, from within a function, if the first function in the call stack was triggered by a non-programmatic event. In your case, the call to setTimeout starts a new call stack, and the security mechanism kicks in to prevent you from setting focus on the input.

Comments

[FarFigNewton]

Are you using the jquery plugin touchend?

[Tim]

Can you elaborate on what you meant by "when called with touchend"?

[apchester]

@guanome- not using any plugins, just standard jquery.

[apchester]

@tim, Sorry I meant replacing the click event argument of bind with the touchend event.

[Kheldar]

stackoverflow.com/questions/3714084/… and stackoverflow.com/questions/5287342/…

[Ads]

I got around this by adding a div that covered the whole display area with some basic instruction in the middle "Tap to Begin". Then bound a "tap" event to the div. The tap then hid the div and set focus to the textbox. That was the only way I could find to get around this crazy problem.

[robocat]

Additionally, in an onclick event for any element, you can call focus() to another input.

[Jörn Berkefeld]

not completely true: if the focus is triggered within the callback of a click event on another INPUT field, this actually works (unless you have an animation in between which seems to interrupt this option again...). so yes it does kinda (not) work, sort of :P

[ddlab]

Unfortunately, 'touchend' doesn't work in every case, but 'mouseup' does ! Please tryout and find your best practice.

[Daft]

Any references to support that Bob? I know myself first hand that focus doesn't work properly. I'm just wondering if Apple has said anything about it themselves.