Prevent jQuery UI dialog from setting focus to first textbox

Question

I have setup a jQuery UI modal dialog to display when a user clicks a link   There are two textboxes  I only show the code for 1 for brevity  in that dialog div tag and it is changed to be a jQuery UI DatePicker textbox that reacts on focus   The problem is that the jQuery UI dialog  open   somehow triggers the first textbox to have focus  which then triggers the datepicker calendar to open immediately   So I am looking for a way to prevent the focus from happening automatically    lt div gt  lt a id  lnkAddReservation  href     gt Add reservation lt  a gt  lt  div gt    lt div id  divNewReservation  style  display none  title  Add reservation  gt       lt table gt           lt tr gt               lt th gt  lt asp Label AssociatedControlID  txtStartDate  runat  server  Text  Start date    gt  lt  th gt               lt td gt                   lt asp TextBox ID  txtStartDate  runat  server  CssClass  datepicker    gt               lt  td gt           lt  tr gt       lt  table gt        lt div gt           lt asp Button ID  btnAddReservation  runat  server  OnClick  btnAddReservation Click  Text  Add reservation    gt       lt  div gt   lt  div gt    lt script type  text javascript  gt        document  ready function             var dlg       divNewReservation                datepicker   datepicker   duration                 dlg dialog   autoOpen false  modal  true  width 400                 lnkAddReservation   click function     dlg dialog  open    return false              dlg parent   appendTo jQuery  form first              lt  script gt

User · Answer

This can be a browser behavior not jQuery plugin issue. Have you tried removing the focus programmatically after you open the popup.

$('#lnkAddReservation').click(function () {
    dlg.dialog('open');

    // you may want to change the selector below
    $('input,textarea,select').blur();

    return false;
});

Haven't tested that but should work ok.

User · Answer

jQuery UI 1 10 0 Changelog lists ticket 4731 as being fixed   Looks like focusSelector was not implemented  but a cascading search for various elements was used instead   From the ticket      Extend autofocus  starting with  autofocus   then  tabbable content  then buttonpane  then close button  then dialog   So  mark an element with the autofocus attribute and that is the element that should get the focus    lt input autofocus gt    In the documentation  the focus logic is explained  just under the table of contents  under the title  Focus        Upon opening a dialog  focus is automatically moved to the first item   that matches the following          The first element within the dialog with the autofocus attribute   The first  tabbable element within the dialog s content   The first  tabbable element within the dialog s buttonpane   The dialog s close button   The dialog itself

User · Answer

Just figured this out while playing around   I found with these solutions to remove focus  caused the ESC key to stop working  ie close the dialog  when first going into the Dialog   If the dialog opens and you immediately press ESC  it won t close the dialog  if you have that enabled   because the focus is on some hidden field or something  and it is not getting keypress events   The way I fixed it was to add this to the open event to remove the focus from the first field instead       myDialog   dialog       open  function event ui              this  parent   focus                This sets focus to the dialog box  which is not visible  and then the ESC key works

User · Answer

I found the following code the jQuery UI dialog function for open   c     add d find   ui-dialog-content  tabbable first    add d find   ui-dialog-buttonpane  tabbable first    add d  filter   first   focus      You can either workaround the jQuery behaviour or change the behaviour   tabindex -1 works as a workaround

User · Answer

Here is the solution I implemented after reading through jQuery UI ticket  4731  originally posted by slolife as a response to another answer    The ticket was also created by him    First  in whatever method you use to apply autocompletes to the page  add the following line of code     ui dialog prototype  focusTabbable   function        That disables jQuery s  auto-focus  behavior   To ensure that your site continues to be broadly accessible  wrap your dialog creation methods so that additional code can be added  and add a call to focus the first input element   function openDialog context            Open your dialog here         Usability for screen readers   Focus on an element so that screen readers report it         input first     context   focus         To further address accessibility when autocomplete options are selected via keyboard  we override jQuery UI s  select  autocomplete callback and add some additional code to ensure the textElement does not lose focus in IE 8 after making a selection   Here is the code we use to apply autocompletes to elements     fn applyAutocomplete   function              Prevents jQuery dialog from auto-focusing on the first tabbable element         Make sure to wrap your dialog opens and focus on the first input element        for screen readers        ui dialog prototype  focusTabbable   function                  autocomplete   this           each function  index                 var textElement   this               var onSelect     this  autocomplete  option    select                  this  autocomplete  option                     select  function  event  ui                           Call the original functionality first                     onSelect event  ui                           We replace a lot of content via AJAX in our project                         This ensures proper copying of values if the original element which jQuery UI pointed to                        is replaced                      var  hiddenValueElement             textElement  attr  data-jqui-acomp-hiddenvalue                         if   hiddenValueElement attr  value      ui item value                             hiddenValueElement attr  value   ui item value                                                 Replace text element value with that indicated by  display  if any                     if  ui item display                          textElement value   ui item display                          For usability purposes   When using the keyboard to select from an autocomplete  this returns focus to the textElement                        textElement  focus                         if  ui item display                          return false                                                           Set clear data flag that can be checked  if necessary  to determine whether list is currently dropped down          on  autocompleteopen   function  event  ui                  event target  data   autocompleteIsDroppedDown   true                      on  autocompleteclose   function  event  ui                  event target  data   autocompleteIsDroppedDown   false                   return this

User · Answer

I had a similar problem and solved it by focusing on the dialog after open   var  dialog       pnlFiltros        dialog           autoOpen  false          hide   puff                              width  dWidth          height   auto           draggable  true          resizable  true          closeOnScape   true          position   x y                               dialog dialog  open        pnlFiltros   focus      focus on the div being dialogued  is that a word     But in my case the first element is an anchor  so I don t know if in your case that will leave the datepicker opened   EDIT  only works on IE

User · Answer

You can Add this         dlg dialog   autoOpen false  modal  true   width  400  open  function                        There is new line       txtStartDate   focus

User · Answer

My workaround   open  function      jQuery  input first   blur      jQuery   ui-datepicker-div   hide

User · Answer

Simple workaround   Just create a invisible element with tabindex 1     This will not focus the datepicker      eg     lt a href    tabindex  1  gt  lt  a gt      Here comes the input element

User · Answer

jQuery 1 9 is released and there does not appear to be a fix  Attempting to prevent focus of the first text box by some of the suggested methods is not working in 1 9  I think beccause the methods attempt to blur focus or move focus occur AFTER the text box in the dialog has already gained focus and done its dirty work   I can t see anything in the API documentation that makes me think that anything has changed in terms of expected functionality  Off to add an opener button

User · Answer

Set the tabindex of the input to -1  and then set dialog open to restore tabindex if you need it later     function              dialog-message    dialog           modal  true          width  500          autoOpen  false          resizable  false          open  function                              datepicker1    attr  tabindex   1                     datepicker2    attr  tabindex   2

User · Answer

In my opinion this solution is very nice       dialog   dialog       open  function event  ui               input   blur                Found here  unable-to-remove-autofocus-in-ui-dialog

User · Answer

If you only have one field in the form of Jquery dialog and it is the one that needs Datepicker  alternatively  you can just set focus on dialog Close  cross  button in dialog s title bar       ui-dialog-titlebar-close   focus      Call this AFTER dialog was initialized  e g        yourDialogId   dialog        ui-dialog-titlebar-close   focus      Because close button is rendered after the  dialog   is called

User · Answer

In jQuery UI    1 10 2  you can replace the  focusTabbable prototype method by a placebo function     ui dialog prototype  focusTabbable     noop    Fiddle  This will affect all dialogs in the page without requiring to edit each one manually   The original function does nothing but setting the focus to the first element with autofocus attribute   tabbable element   or falling back to the dialog itself  As its use is just setting focus on an element  there should be no problem replacing it by a noop

User · Answer

As mentioned  this is a known bug with jQuery UI and should be fixed relatively soon   Until then     Here s another option  so you don t have to mess with tabindex   Disable the datepicker temporarily until the dialog box opens   dialog find   datepicker   datepicker  disable    dialog dialog        open   function      this  find   datepicker   datepicker  enable            Works for me   Duplicate question  How to blur the first form input at the dialog opening

User · Answer

I had content that was longer than the dialog  On open  the dialog would scoll to the first  tabbable which was at the bottom  Here was my fix       myDialog   dialog             open  function event  ui      this  scrollTop 0

User · Answer

I got the same problem   The workaround I did is add the dummy textbox at the top of the dialog container    lt input type  text  style  width  1px  height  1px  border  0px     gt

User · Answer

I d the same issue and solved it by inserting an empty input before the datepicker  that steals the focus every time the dialog is opened  This input is hidden on every opening of the dialog and shown again on closing

User · Answer

I had similar problem  On my page first input is text box with jQuery UI calendar  Second element is button  As date already have value  I set focus on button  but first add trigger for blur on text box  This solve problem in all browsers and probably in all version of jQuery  Tested in version 1 8 2    lt div style  padding-bottom  30px  height  40px  width  100    gt   using  Html BeginForm  Statistics    Admin   FormMethod Post  new   id    FormStatistics             lt label style  float  left   gt  Translation StatisticsChooseDate lt  label gt       Html TextBoxFor m   gt  m SelectDate  new    class    js-date-time     tabindex 1         lt input class  button gray-button button-large button-left-margin text-bold  style  position relative  top -5px   type  submit  id  ButtonStatisticsSearchTrips  value   Translation StatisticsSearchTrips   tabindex  2   gt         lt script type  text javascript  gt    document  ready function                      SelectDate   blur function                  SelectDate   datepicker  hide                    ButtonStatisticsSearchTrips   focus

User · Answer

Well  it is cool that nobody found the solution for now  but it looks like I have something for you  The bad news is that the dialog grabs focus in any case even if no inputs and links are inside   I use the dialog as a tooltip and definitely need focus stay in the original element  Here is my solution   use option  autoOpen  false    toolTip dialog  widget   css  visibility    hidden      toolTip dialog  open     toolTip dialog  widget   css  visibility    visible      While the dialog invisible  the focus is not set anywhere and stay in the original place   It works for tooltips with just a plain text  but not tested for more functional dialogs where it may be important to have dialog visible on opening moment  Probably will work fine in any case   I understand that the original post was just to avoid getting focus on the first element  but you can easily decide where the focus should be after the dialog is opened  after my code    Tested in IE  FF and Chrome   Hopefully this will help somebody

User · Answer

Add a hidden span above it  use ui-helper-hidden-accessible to make it hidden by absolute positioning  I know you have that class because you are using dialog from jquery-ui and it s in jquery-ui    lt span class  ui-helper-hidden-accessible  gt  lt input type  text   gt  lt  span gt

User · Answer

I have a similar problem  I open an error dialog when validation fails and it grabs the focus  just like Flugan shows it in his answer  The problem is that even if no element inside the dialog is tabbable  the dialog itself is still focused  Here is the original unminified code from jquery-ui-1 8 23 js jquery ui dialog js      set focus to the first tabbable element in the content area or the first button    if there are no tabbable elements  set focus on the dialog itself   self element find   tabbable   get   concat    uiDialog find   ui-dialog-buttonpane  tabbable   get   concat      uiDialog get      eq 0  focus      The comment is theirs   This is really bad for me for several reasons  The most annoying thing is that the first reaction of the user is to hit the backspace to delete the last character  but instead  s he is prompted to leave the page  because the backspace is hit outside an input control   I found that the following workaround works pretty good for me   jqueryFocus     fn focus    fn focus   function  delay  fn      jqueryFocus apply this filter   not  ui-dialog     arguments

User · Answer

This is really important for smartphones and tablets because the keyboard comes up when an input has the focus  This is what I ve done  add this input at the beginning of the div    lt input type  image  width  1px  height  1px   gt    Doesn t work with size 0px  I guess it s even better with a real transparent image  either  png or  gif but I haven t tried   Working fine so far in iPad

User · Answer

Starting from jQuery UI 1 10 0  you can choose which input element to focus on by using the HTML5 attribute autofocus   All you have to do is create a dummy element as your first input in the dialog box  It will absorb the focus for you    lt input type  hidden  autofocus  autofocus    gt    This has been tested in Chrome  Firefox and Internet Explorer  all latest versions  on February 7  2013      http   jqueryui com upgrade-guide 1 10  added-ability-to-specify-which-element-to-focus-on-open

User · Answer

as first input     lt input type  text  style  position absolute top -200px    gt

User · Answer

If you re using dialog buttons  just set the autofocus attribute on one of the buttons    x000D   x000D      dialog   dialog   x000D    buttons    x000D        x000D        text   OK   x000D        autofocus   autofocus  x000D         x000D        x000D        text   Cancel  x000D        x000D      x000D      x000D   lt script src  https   code jquery com jquery-1 12 4 min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   lt script src  https   code jquery com ui 1 11 4 jquery-ui min js  gt  lt  script gt  x000D   lt link href  https   code jquery com ui 1 11 4 themes smoothness jquery-ui css  rel  stylesheet   gt  x000D   x000D   lt div id  dialog  title  Basic dialog  gt  x000D    This is some text  x000D     lt br  gt  x000D     lt a href  www google com  gt This is a link  lt  a gt  x000D     lt br  gt  x000D     lt input value  This is a textbox   gt  x000D   lt  div gt  x000D   x000D   x000D

User · Answer

You may provide this option  to focus the close button instead    dialog         open  function                        ui-dialog-titlebar-close   focus

User · Answer

find in jquery ui js   d find   ui-dialog-buttonpane  tabbable   get   concat d get      eq 0  focus       and replace with   d find   ui-dialog-buttonpane  tabbable   get   concat d get      eq -1  focus

User · Answer

To expand on some of the previous answers  and ignoring the ancillary datepicker aspect   if you want to prevent the focus   event from focusing the first input field when your dialog opens  try this       myDialog   dialog         open   function        input first-child     this   blur

User · Answer

I was looking around for a different issue but same cause   The issue is that the dialog set focus to the first  lt a href    gt   lt  a gt  it finds   So if you have a lot of text in your dialog and scroll bars appear you could have the situation where the scroll bar will be scrolled to the bottom   I believe this also fixes the first persons question   Although the others do as well   The simple easy to understand fix   lt a id  someid  href     gt   lt  a gt   as the first line in your dialog div   EXAMPLE      lt div id  dialogdiv  title  some title  gt       lt a id  someid  href     gt   lt  a gt       lt p gt            the rest of your stuff      lt  p gt   lt  div gt     Where your dialog is initiated     somediv  dialog           modal  true          open  function          someid   hide    otherstuff or function            close  function          someid   show    otherstuff or function              The above will have nothing focused and the scroll bars will remain at the top where it belongs   The  lt a gt  gets focus but is then hidden  So the overall effect is the desired effect   I know this is an old thread but as for as the UI docs there is no fix to this   This does not require blur or focus to work   Not sure if it is the most elegant   But it just makes sense and easy to explain to anyone

[javascript] Prevent jQuery UI dialog from setting focus to first textbox

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