Question

OK, I know how to detect keyboard input. I know how to focus on keyboard input.

But I want to know what the best practice is for detecting keyboard input => focusing to textarea or textfield => AND enter that key into the field.

Here’s how it would work: I’m on a page. I type A. Then my textfield gets focused and A is typed into the field. This sounds trivial but actually I haven’t found a simple way to do this. The reason is because the initial keyboard input event is not directed towards the textfield, and I need to propagate that event to the newly focused text field.

Is there a conventional approach to doing something like this?

Answer 1

Sample html:

<form>
<input type="text" />
<input type="text" id="thisguy" />
<input type="text" />
<input type="text" />
</form>​​​

jQuery for above html

$(document).live('keypress', function (e) {

$('#thisguy').val($('#thisguy').val() + String.fromCharCode(e.which));
});​

Needs to be cleaned up. Maybe set focus instead of changing the text value.