Comments on: Initial focus to a text field - good or bad?

By: BB

BB — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:43:03 +0000

I would recommend not putting an auto-focus on login pages. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve keyed in my username and am halfway through typing in my password when the page finally finishes loading and sets the focus to the username field. The result? Half my password in the username field. In short, a great way to infuriate your readers!

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:43:20 +0000

Rudy,

No problem at all! And a good day to you too!

By: Rudy Johnson

Rudy Johnson — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:56:47 +0000

ooops, thx Robert N … I did not even notice that, my bad!
Have a good day!

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 07:57:30 +0000

Andrew,

Good points.

By: Andrew

Andrew — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:27:36 +0000

Yes! It’s bad. I’m every so often use laptop and keyboard navigation. Try scroll down with arrow keys on page with big content and focused text field.
It is best use tab key and go to text field or link or all that is wanted. Use tabindex attribute for text field instead focus.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 08:55:26 +0000

Rudy,

Thanks for sharing. Also, I removed the link in your comment since your name is also linked to your web site; no need for double linkage!

By: Rudy Johnson

Rudy Johnson — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 00:27:37 +0000

Good
- for a website like Google which only has one main purpose > searching using that infamous single input text field
- for a contact us or search page with only form fields on it > the website owner know why a visitor has hit the specific page so help the user out with a small time saver

not so Good
- content rich pages
- pages where the focus is not the intended *focus*

It all comes down to case by case basis.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 09:01:43 +0000

Rumoroso,

Interesting. Thanks for the input.

By: Rumoroso

Rumoroso — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 08:14:36 +0000

If the user uses screen reader (x. Jaws) and the initial focus is in the text field, he will not read the previous content. In many cases (maybe, in all cases) this initial content includes necessary information (site headings, information about the form, links, required fields, etc) and if the form includes required fields, when there are errors , they appear appears before the fields.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:52:21 +0000

Jules,

Interesting question. Personally, I hate focus set to form fields directly as you leave them if you didn’t fill them out correctly. But if it’s when submitting a form, it might help, although I prefer showing where the error occurred in some other manner than setting focus to the field itself.

Also, I think the gravatar issue you mention was some temporarily loading problem…

By: Jules

Jules — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 21:18:56 +0000

What about a situation whereby there was an error on the form and you want to direct the user to the field in error?

Robert: Weird thing is happening - Jonathan Snook’s gravatar is appearing beside your comments and nothing beside yours.

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 09:10:38 +0000

Thanks for sharing, guys. And that’s right, Daniel. Be tough on them!

By: Tommy Olsson

Tommy Olsson — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 06:24:46 +0000

If the main purpose of the page is to fill in a form, then initial focus may be justified. Otherwise it is a bad thing.

I’m an Opera user who loves the spatial navigation. If there’s a form but no initial focus, all I have to do is hit the Tab key to go to the first form field. If there is initial focus to, e.g., a search form, and I don’t want to search, I may have to ‘unfocus’ the search field before I can use spatial navigation.

By: Douglas Clifton

Douglas Clifton — Tue, 14 Nov 2006 00:55:24 +0000

Another problem with giving focus to an input field is it breaks using the Backspace browser keyboard shortcut. Do a Google search, click the Next link, hit the BS key expecting to go back to the previous results and what happens? I’m not sure if Safari uses the same shortcut, but under Firefox this behavior is really annoying since it is the primary method I use to nav back.

By: Daniel Talsky

Daniel Talsky — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:34:43 +0000

Usually bad. I understand why google does it but I still hate it. It’s a usability problem. I just myself hate focus being taken from me.

You know, it’s just like you said… it works for google, so they do it, but it doesn’t work for Amazon, so they don’t. So then you just don’t know what to expect when you go to a website. Do you suddenly have focus in a form field or not?

Google I’ll forgive, because they are the titans, and they are almost a seperate web entity unto themselves. But others… give me back my damn focus. Punks.

By: Jens Meiert

Jens Meiert — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 21:02:11 +0000

Approach 1: Test with users.

Approach 2: Use your experience (and/or common sense).

By: Robert Nyman

Robert Nyman — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 19:18:27 +0000

Thanks, all! Good to see that you share my opinions on it.

Chris,

A well-structured web page where the tab order is what you expect, paried with any eventual skip links to help the user out.

Martin,

If the web page only consists of a login, absolutely. But if you have one with lots of elements and sections, I wouldn’t like it.

Jonathan,

Couldn’t agree more. That’s what the intention of my ELO object is; to implement support in all the major web browsers for checking when the actual DOM itself has finished loading.

Lachlan,

Oh, absolutely. Find-as-you-type is a suberb feature that every web browsers should support, and such annoyances is just terrible.

By: Tim Hofman

Tim Hofman — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 18:32:17 +0000

I only use it on pages with forms to log in or retrieve passwords etc. Pages where you can be almost a 100% certain that the user is on the page for that action.

On other pages it’s a no go for me. It can be/is quite irritating when you have to navigate all the way back with your keyboard to something like the main navigation, just because of a initial focus on a field.

By: Lachlan Hunt

Lachlan Hunt — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 16:52:19 +0000

Another reason it’s bad is because of Find-as-you-type in Firefox. I’ll often go to a website and just start typing to find what I’m looking for on the page. It’s incredibly annoying on some sites where I find I’m suddenly typing in a text box instead.

A good example of where this exceptionally bad is MSN. As soon as you start typing, focus is immediately given to the text box, even if you explicitly take focus out of it!

By: Jonathan Snook

Jonathan Snook — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 13:42:53 +0000

As the others have said, don’t do it on pages that have too many fields. It’s good for a page that has one task to perform and has limited inputs. A search box or a login form would be about it. However, I hate scripts that use window.onload. I’ve often been midway through typing a password and the focus switches to the username box. Gah. Use DOMContentLoaded or equivalent.