Life, the Universe and the Internet

I had a recent problem when working with ajax update panels on an asp.net application. I basically had a panel with lots of drop down boxes and text boxes inside it. Whenever a drop down was changed or a value was entered in a textbox, the whole panel would be recalculated as it contained totals and sub totals based on the contents of these boxes.

The problem I had was that I had to include all of the controls inside the update panel otherwise I would have ended up with 20-30 update panels on the page, a situation that I really wanted to avoid. Because the controls were inside the panel every partial postback I was losing the focus as effectively even though you don’t see it, the panel is destroyed and rebuilt every time.

So it became impossible for a user to just tab through the form updating values, as the focus was reset with every field, not an ideal user friendly situation.

So after much research I discovered that you can actually force focus to an individual control using the script manager control in the server side code. The code to do this is pretty simple, and would be something like:

Me.ScriptManager1.SetFocus(Textbox1)

Where scriptmanager1 is the name of your script manager control and textbox1 is the name of the control you want to set the focus too.

Now this is fine if you always know which control should have the focus, however if you have a lot of controls being processed inside one update panel you might not know which control to focus on next. Thankfully I found a neat little javascript on this blog http://couldbedone.blogspot.com/2007/08/restoring-lost-focus-in-update-panel.html That you can include with your script manager on any page, the javascipt will take care of all your focus problems for any update panels you have on your page. I’ll include the full script code below, don’t ask me to explain how it works, I’m just happy that it does and hope it will be of some use to you.

// JScript File

var lastFocusedControlId = "";

function focusHandler(e)

{

document.activeElement = e.originalTarget;

}

function appInit()

{

if (typeof(window.addEventListener) !== "undefined")

{

window.addEventListener("focus", focusHandler, true);

}

Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().add_pageLoading(pageLoadingHandler);

Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().add_pageLoaded(pageLoadedHandler);

}

function pageLoadingHandler(sender, args)

{

lastFocusedControlId = typeof(document.activeElement) === "undefined"

? "" : document.activeElement.id;}function focusControl(targetControl)

{

if (Sys.Browser.agent === Sys.Browser.InternetExplorer)

{

var focusTarget = targetControl;

if (focusTarget && (typeof(focusTarget.contentEditable) !== "undefined"))

{

oldContentEditableSetting = focusTarget.contentEditable;

focusTarget.contentEditable = false;

}

else

{

focusTarget = null;

}

targetControl.focus();

if (focusTarget)

{

focusTarget.contentEditable = oldContentEditableSetting;

}

}

else

{

targetControl.focus();

}

}

function pageLoadedHandler(sender, args)

{

if (typeof(lastFocusedControlId) !== "undefined" && lastFocusedControlId != "")

{

var newFocused = $get(lastFocusedControlId);

if (newFocused)

{

focusControl(newFocused);

}

}

}

Sys.Application.add_init(appInit);

Well 2007 is gone and here we are in another year. Hope everyone who might read this had a good year last year, a nice Christmas and will have an even better 2008. If you made resolutions, good luck with them. I made a few, one of which was to actually post something here now and then.

This was a very different Christmas for me, mainly because my daughter is now three and she suddenly realises what Christmas is all about. It really was wonderful to see someone soak up all the magic of this time of year and I realise now that these are really going to be some precious years for Christmas and I intend to make the most of them for her and us.

Had a few nice presents myself the coolest of which was probably a mini RC helicopter that you can fly in the house. It’s a pretty simple little thing but it’s tremendous fun and with a little bit of practice it soon becomes easy to fly. The only slight problem is that my dog has decided it’s some kind of creature to chase and I dare not let it fly too low now when he’s around or it will be in his mouth before I could blink.

I’m currently hooked on Call Of Duty 4 for the XBOX 360 which has to be one of the best looking games I think I have ever seen on any console. I don’t tend to play it much though because I won’t play violent games in front of my daughter she takes way too much in.

I don’t know whether it’s just new year Euphoria but I am actually looking forward to the year ahead and the challenges to come.

Happy New Year Everyone.

This is a bit off topic for this blog, but I just have to post something about my new toy. As anyone whose read this blog enough will know I’m a bit of a film nut and I have a large screen and projector set up at home to get the full cinema effect.

Recently I’ve upgraded my projector, I didn’t really have any intention of doing it but I got to hear about a new full 1080p projector that had just been released, was getting rave reviews and was incredibly low priced compared to other 1080p models. The projector in question is the new Optoma Themescence HD80 and is available for under £2000. For this price I got the projector, and eight foot screen and a free replacement bulb voucher.

And boy what a projector it is, I was totally blown away with it. I managed to arrange a demo at Sevenoaks Hi-Fi in Bristol. They were demo-ing it with a PS3 and some Blu-Ray disks and it is just incredibly detailed, really bright, rich deep colours and amazingly quiet too. I’m running it with a Xbox 360 and HD-DVD Drive and the Xbox is very cool at this size and detail level.

In terms of value for money, I really think this projector is unbeatable, when you think that much of the competition at this level is up over £6000 or more there really is no beating it. If you’re interested in getting one, I really recommend seeking out a demo, you will love it.