CODEWITHSUNDEEP
apache-flexflex4
Dave 114
Dave 114

Reputation: 193

Trapping and consuming keystrokes in Flex app

In my Flex 4.9.1 application, at a particular point I put up a "sheet of glass" over the entire stage. It's purpose is to trap all mouse clicks until the user presses the escape key, which removes it. That part is easy and works well. It's just a FlexSprite, parented by the systemManager, which paints transparent pixels over the entire screen.

The problem is that, regardless of where the focus is before the glass is put up, or even if stage.focus is set to null, the user can press the tab key and focus text inputs beneath the glass, and enter text into them.

I tried listening for KEY_UP and KEY_DOWN events on the systemManager, with useCapture=true, and the highest possible priority (0x7FFFFF). When I get the events, I call stopPropagation(), stopImmediatePropagation(), and preventDefault() (even though the events are not cancelable) on them. Nothing works. No matter what, hitting the tab key several times will bring a textfield into focus, and typing letters will enter text into the fields.

So it appears that the text fields are not actually controlled by the key events they dispatch, as if the text is entered before the event is actually dispatched. Because presumably, if they were, they would listen at the target phase of the event flow. And as for the tab key, I have no idea why stopping its propagation doesn't prevent the focus switching.

Has anyone accomplished what I'm trying to accomplish before? If so, what worked?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 34

Answers (1)

Brian
Brian

Reputation: 3914

You can use Application.application.enabled = false; to disable all the controls beneath the top-level Application while the "sheet of glass" is up.

See this answer for more details.

Upvotes: 0

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