Tabs in Flash Textfield

19 Mar 2005

I want to know if there is any way to use TAB key within a text
field, in Actionscript. I want four space characters to be inserted
inside a text field, whenever a user presses "TAB" button, instead of
selecting the object with next tab index. Can anyone tell me if and
how it is possible?
This question was asked on IndiaMMUG list. I found a quick & dirty solution for this. Yeah, it's achieved using a button and on(keyPress "") { } handler...
Here is my answer:
1) Keep a button in offstage area
2) Put the following code on the button:</p>

on(keyPress "") {
if(Selection.getFocus() == targetPath(_txt)) {
var ci = Selection.getCaretIndex();
//assuming _txt is instance of textfield
var _str:String = _txt.text;
var arr:Array = _str.split("");	 arr.splice(ci, 0, "\t");
_txt.text = arr.join("");
Selection.setSelection(ci+1, ci+1);
delete arr;
}
}</pre>
This is just logic and there is whole big room for improvement and all best practices :)

It might have many bugs, I have not tested it...

Above code works on the cost of *NO* Tabbing in flash movie, which means pressing Tab won't shift focus to different object(movieclip, button, components etc). But I am sure, that can be achieved with more code and better logic. Probably attaching/removing code when Textfield gets/looses focus...

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Code beautifier never works because I have not fixed it yet ;)