• Focus Presentation
  • Concept of Focus
  • Giving Focus
• Moving Focus
  • Concept of Focus Chain
  • Focusable Objects
  • Handling Key Input
  • Hiding, Deleting or Disabling a Focused Object
  • Selecting Next Object
• Customizing Focus
  • Customizing Object's Focus Exit Chain
  • Customizing Whole Application's Focus Chain
  • Customizing Collision of Both
• Focus on UI Component

Focus is a graphical user interface concept. A component, for example, a UI component, has a focus when it is selected to receive input from the user. The input can be an event, such as mouse button click or key press.

Focusing can be immediate (selected by the touchscreen or mouse) or relative (selected by a key press).

There are mainly two ways to set focus on a graphical elements:

• Direct selection: this is done by clicking on the element.
• Relative selection: this is done by moving the selection from a UI component to another, such as going to the previous or next one; this is done with a keyboard.

Direct selection does not really need any kind of special treatment as the user explicitly selects the UI component to interact with.

Relative selection' default order is the one the UI components have been added to the canvas. That may not be appropriate, if they are added programmatically in different order than they appear on-screen.

The order the focus goes from a UI component to another is called the focus chain. As said before, the default focus chain is set to the order the UI components have been added to the canvas.

An object can be focused if the following conditions apply:

• object is visible
• object is enabled
• object accepts focus
• object's subtree (if any) is focusable
• all of object's parents have their subtrees focusable

If any of these conditions do not apply, the object is unfocusable.

Handling of the keys is done automatically by Elementary. According to which key the user pressed, Elementary switches the focus in the selected direction. For example, using the Tab key the focus goes to the next object in the natural order, whereas using the direction keys the focus goes to the next object in the requested direction.

When a UI component is hidden, deleted, or disabled, it becomes unfocusable.

When a focused object is unfocusable, the focus is moved to another object.

When the user wants to switch the focus to the next object (i.e. cycle focus), Elementary searches the first object which is focusable.

If there is a disabled or read-only object in the focus chain, the focus goes to the following object in the requested direction.

There are several reasons why to customize the focus chain of an application, for example:

• If you have created a form with labels and text entries next to them, the focus moves to the entry field when the user clicks on the associated label.
• If you have created an interface with several columns (table), set the focus chain as you wish, for example, going horizontally instead of going vertically, regardless whatever the order the UI components are added.

Set the object to focus after other object in a specific direction using elm_object_focus_next_object_set(object, next, direction). Use the following directions:

• ELM_FOCUS_NEXT: next UI component in natural order
• ELM_FOCUS_PREVIOUS: previous UI component in natural order
• ELM_FOCUS_UP: UI component to focus when going up
• ELM_FOCUS_DOWN: UI component to focus when going down
• ELM_FOCUS_RIGHT: UI component to focus when going right
• ELM_FOCUS_LEFT: UI component to focus when going left

Set the object next to another in a specific direction using elm_object_focus_next_object_get(object, direction).

To customize the application's custom chain:

Evas_Object *main, *obj1, *obj2, *obj3, *obj4, *obj5;
 
Eina_List *focus_chain = NULL;
focus_chain = eina_list_append(focus_chain, obj3);
focus_chain = eina_list_append(focus_chain, obj2);
// The chain is obj3, then obj2. We set it.
elm_object_focus_custom_chain_set(main, focus_chain);
// Here we prepend obj5 at the beginning of the chain.
elm_object_focus_chain_prepend(main, NULL, obj5);
// We append obj1 after obj3.
elm_object_focus_chain_append(main, obj3, obj1);
// We prepend obj4 before obj1.
elm_object_focus_chain_prepend(main, obj1, obj4);

The focus chain is obj5, obj3, obj4, obj1, obj2.

This actually applies to any container: it is possible to set the focus chain of, for example, a box.

If an object is part of a focus chain and has the next focused object defined, the next object takes precedence over the focus chain.

Following on the previous example, if obj4 has obj5 defined as its next object, the actual focus chain is obj5, obj3, obj4, and loop back to obj5.

If your Evas object has several sub-objects, set its focus chain using the same functions as for the application. Elementary first follows the main focus chain, and then the focus chain of each UI component if applicable.

Use elm_object_focus_get(object) to set whether a specific object has the focus. Set the focus to an object using elm_object_focus_set(object, set), where set is a Boolean value. If it is set to EINA_TRUE, the focus is set to that given object. If it is set to EINA_False, the focus is unset and passed back to the previous element in the focus chain. Set the focus only after the object is shown, that is, after evas_object_show(object) has been called. Call the function back when the object receives or loses focus by registering on smart event “focused” or “unfocused”

Use elm_object_tree_focus_allow_set(object, focusable) to tell Elementary whether an object and its children are focusable, where focusable is a Boolean value. Get the current value using elm_object_tree_focus_allow_get(object).

The similar functions for a specific object are elm_object_focus_allow_set(object, focusable) and elm_object_focus_allow_get(object).