[IxDA Discuss] Stuffing focus to textbox controls

[Jim Drew]

This may relate to the recent auto-tabbing thread...

For using a proxy server to establish an internet connection, we have one checkbox for enabling the proxy, which makes active a textbox for the server and port plus another checkbox for authorization.  Turning on the second checkbox enables username/password fields.

What should happen with the input focus when the checkboxes are turned on?  Should it stay where the user last clicked, or should it move to the newly enabled textbox, or go somewhere else.  (The first textbox has default cue text in it of "server:port"; the other textboes have no default content.)

I'm of the opinion that the user's next action is always going to be to fill in the textbox, so moving the focus helps the user.  ("Always": well, unless he is just playing around, seeing that the controls work.  If he is *using* them, then pretty close to "always".)

The response from the Dev team has been "Maybe that's how who you used to work for did it, but that's not how Windows does it, so we won't either."

Is that true?  I couldn't find any examples of enabling sub-controls in Windows Explorer (or Internet Explorer or Word) with a little poking around, so I can't be sure that the claim is true.  (And if it is true, does that just mean Microsoft needs to improve their behaviors?)  Can anyone point me to a handful of examples, be they from Microsoft products or otherwise?

Thanks.

-- Jim Drew
   Seattle, WA