Focus

What is focus? Focus is when something is active or highlighted. Example: When the cursor is in a form blinking. That form has the focus. The following are examples of how to use the focus command.

Focus to a text box when page loads.

See how the cursor is already in the form. Normally the cursor won't be in it. Put the following lines into your body tag.

<body onLoad="this.document.form1.a.focus();">

An example is:
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#FF0000" VLINK="#000080" ALINK="#000080" onLoad="this.document.form1.a.focus();">
or
<body onLoad="this.document.form1.a.focus();">

And put this somewhere in your page.

<form name=form1>
<input type="text" size=40 name="a" value="">
<input type="text" size=40 name="b" value="http://"></form>

Giving focus to a form and to having all the words inside it highlighted

Just copy the following lines.

<body onLoad="this.document.form1.a.focus(); this.document.form1.a.select();">
<form name=form1>
<input type="text" size="100" name="a" value="">
<input type="text" size="100" name="b" value="http://"></form>

Highlighting a text area

Now all you need to do is goto Edit and hit copy and BAM! You just copied that script!! To use this copy this code.

<form name=form2>
<textarea name="c" rows=4 cols=40>
<script>
document.write("Hello there!!!")
</script>
</TEXTAREA><br>
<input type="button" value="Select" onClick="document.form2.c.focus(); document.form2.c.select();">
</form>

You can use this for regular text boxes as well!

Giving the focus to a button

See how the text in the button has a box around it. If you hit the space bar, you can press in the button. A more practical use for this is using the onLoad function. Here is the script.

<body onLoad="this.document.form3.d.focus();">
<form name=form3>
<input type=button name=d value="DESCRIPTION"></form>

Quick Note: To declare a certain form or button part of you code would look like this:
< body onLoad="document.form1.a.focus()">
In the onLoad command, "document" refers to the current document. "form1" refers to the the name of a from. "a" refers to the name of the input type within the form. "focus()" is the focus command ( "select()" selects all the text). This should help you if you want to create your own focus commands.