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Activate top-left Screen Component upon opening a screen

Related products:Universal GUI
  • February 10, 2023
  • 2 replies
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Arie V
Community Manager
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Upon opening a new Document in the Universal GUI the first value in the top left (at least for Western writing) Screen Component should be activated. This especially goes for the Grid component, where it seems as if the first Row is selected. In below example it took me 44 tabs to get to the first column value of the seemingly selected Row. Could the Universal GUI be a bit smarter here?

 

2 replies

Mark Jongeling
Administrator
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NewOpen

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  • Rookie
  • February 27, 2026

In other non-Thinkwise projects I’ve seen AG Grid implemented in such a way that the focus-field and record-selection by keyboard arrows are programmatically connected to give the fastest experience. 

It works like this: 

  • User sets focus to any filter field of the grid, most commonly the (global) search field.
  • User starts to filter for some recordset he wants to filter on, e.g. by typing “1234”. The system applies filters and now shows some record-set (e.g. 10 records). 
  • Now without leaving the search field focus, the user can use arrow up and down arrow keys of his keyboard. For the search field, the datagrid is programmed to catch the arrow up and arrow keys and programmatically (using AG Grid internal API) move the recordselection. 
  • The user did not leave the filter field focus for typing. Without having to reactivate or set focus to the search field again, the user can just type another character (e.g. type “5” which now makes his filter-value “12345”). The system applies filters and now shows some record-set (e.g. 3 records). 
  • Once again and without having to leave the filter field focus, he can use his up and down keyboard arrows to change selection. 

This solves the most common scenario where a user wants to ‘switch’ focus between filter fields and record selection by keyboard. With the solution above, the user does not have to switch focus at all.  

In addition to this, when a screen is opened, the developer needs to be able to assign where to by default set focus to. By default, that would be the global search field of the top grid. 

If you now combine programmatic recordselection and auto-set focus on screen entry when opening it, you now have a solution what users do 95% of the time (have focus in 1 search field and change selection).