Digital Workshop

Hi,

I have a page in a publication which has a text input box which is set to have automatic keyboard focus. However, when I open another (invisible) page in a new window on top, the text input box on the first page loses keyboard focus, even though there is no text input box on the other page. Does anyone know of a way to fix this?

EDIT: Nevermind, didn't have 'auto focus' ticked for the text input box...

DOUBLE EDIT: Ok, this is strange. Ticking 'auto focus' solved the problem for me on my machine, but a colleague with exactly the same publication (except with a different name) and exactly the same version of Opus has also ticked 'auto focus', and although the cursor appears in the tex input box, when he types, nothing is entered. I'm very confused now.

TRIPLE EDIT: And now it doesn't work on mine either, even though I haven't changed anything since it worked.

Wrong reason...the text box isn't losing focus the window is. It's like switching between a Firefox search box and an MS Word document.

BTW - you need to post a profile of Opus / OS versions.

Mack

Added those to my profile now.

So do you know of any way to stop the hidden window stealing focus from the other page?

Remember the old joke about the patient who said his arm only hurt when he twisted it a certain way, and the doctor said the cure was "Don't twist your arm that way."

Well I'm wondering why do you need a "hidden window?" I've been building multimedia presentations and computer based training for more than 20 years, and I've never needed anything like that. Please explain. Maybe by changing your design we can solve your problem. The beauty of OPUS is -- there are always multiple ways to do things.

Well basically we're using hidden windows because we need to pre-load a lot of sounds, and we found doing this 'in the background' using hidden windows drastically reduced the loading times of our pages (where the sounds were pre-loaded previously). So we don't want to change the design because aside from this keyboard issue, using hidden windows has been very good for us.

You know there's an OPUS feature to "pre-load" sound, right? What file format are you using for your sounds? I've seen very large videos take a moment to load, but I've never had MP3 or wma audio (even full songs) take more than a heart beat.

Think I'm going to need something stronger than coffee.


It's a hack, but then...the last page loaded should be the one with focus, so just arrange the order.

Mack

Yes, we are pre-loading the sounds, but we found doing this on the page itself caused the page to take longer to load than we felt it should - hence why we pre-load them in hidden windows now.

Consider this idea: Make a duplicate of the actual Page, but don't have anything on it that uses resources, then have that Page automatically go forward to the Page you really want in 1 second. This will allow what looks like your Page to immediately appear, then the more resource intense Page will be loading while the viewer reads the Page's content. When they are ready to click something, the material will be ready.

I think you are going to have problems in the future with your "hidden window" idea. I'm trying to help you develop an alternative solution. What type of audio files (MP3, WMA, etc) are you using? Short, highly compressed audio files will obviously load faster than others.

That wouldn't work, the sound starts as soon the page content appears, so it needs to be loaded before the page's content appears.

As I've said, we've had no problems with hidden windows at all except for the focus between pages issue. I'm wondering what problems you might be anticipating with them, especially as you've stated you've never used them yourself?

The files are all WAV and compressed.

Let me get clear on this. The text-input Page is in Chap 1 and the 'invisible' Page is in say Chap 20 which displays in its own window, correct? How is it 'invisible'...? Does the Chap 20 Page need to be on-top to pre-load the resources?

One idea: go to Page Properties of ~Chap 20 Page, and check the setting to 'show page for...' 2 secs, then 'Goto this page when finished': Chap 1 Page. If you've set the Text Input object for auto-focus, then I would think this would work.

Beyond that you could look into script commands regarding View/Views -- and depending on your design, perhaps find some ways to manipulate windows there.

Another fall-back approach could be to put your 'invisible page' in an Opus 'Panel', i.e., use the Layout features in the Publication properties. (mainly it is the same principle as above.... you want to goto some Page in your 'Main' area automatically in case the User clicks on the Panel 1 Page. Trick is to know and program which Page is the current Page to get back to.) You could place a large Frame on that dummy Page and 'prevent Mouse-Clicks' etc. if need be.