Next/Previous Support on forms on iPad

[cjustice]

We've noticed in our app running on the iPad the Next/Previous button on the keypad skips many fields that are not skipped when tabbing between fields on a desktop browser.

You can see this behavior in the showcase at http://www.smartclient.com/smartgwt/showcase/#form_controls_various. If you place focus in the first field in the form, and start hitting the Next button on the keyboard, you'll see it skip several of the form fields.

Is there anything that I can do to correct this behavior? If not, are there plans to address this in future releases of SmartGWT?

Thanks!
Chris

[Isomorphic]

Hi Chris
The reason for this behavior is that the Previous / Next buttons which show up when you put focus into certain form items in iOS will only recognize certain native element types as focusable targets, and the SmartGWT FormItems are not all based on these element types.
In many of these cases this is expected -- for example there isn't a sensible "focused" behavior for iOS for a LinkItem (showing a keyboard, for example, would clearly be inappropriate here).

The single case where this is most confusing is probably SelectItems - SmartGWT SelectItems do not write out native <SELECT ...> tags by default as we support a more sophisticated interface based on a customized drop down ListGrid.
If this is a concern within your app, the simplest way to proceed is probably to make use of a ComboBoxItem (with addUnknownValues set to false) instead of a SelectItem. This gives similar practical functionality and is focusable in iOS.

Similarly you probably will want to set "useTextField" to true on DateItems so they show a focusable <input type=text ...> element.

Regards
Isomorphic Software