Question

I have a jQuery textarea with the jQuery ui autocomplete plugin applied. I’m noticing that even when the autocomplete suggestions aren’t displayed, moving up and down with arrows doesn’t work. Only right and left.

Any ideas why and how to resolve? Is this an option? I understand up and down being disabled when the autocomplete options are open, but if they are not open why disable?

Thanks

Answer 1

The Autocomplete implementation binds the ‘keydown’ event on the element itself the plugin is applied to, and it prevents default behavior.

I guess the plugin was intended to be used on text fields and not textarea in the first place.

this.element
    ...
    .bind( "keydown.autocomplete", function( event ) {
        if ( self.options.disabled || self.element.propAttr( "readOnly" ) ) {
            return;
        }

        suppressKeyPress = false;
        var keyCode = $.ui.keyCode;
        switch( event.keyCode ) {
            ...
            case keyCode.UP:
                self._move( "previous", event );
                // prevent moving cursor to beginning of text field in some browsers
                event.preventDefault();
                break;
            case keyCode.DOWN:
                self._move( "next", event );
                // prevent moving cursor to end of text field in some browsers
                event.preventDefault();
                break;