onfocus event

Article
01/24/2012

[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]

Fires when the object receives focus.

Syntax

HTML Attribute	<element onfocus = "handler(event)">
Event Property	object.onfocus = handler;
attachEvent Method	object.attachEvent("onfocus", handler)
addEventListener Method	object.addEventListener("focus", handler, useCapture)

Standards information

HTML 4.01 Specification, Section 18.2.3

Event information

Synchronous	No
Bubbles	No
Cancelable	No

Event handler parameters

pEvtObj [in]
Type: IHTMLEventObj

Remarks

Note Using the setActive method has no effect on document focus. Using the focus method on an individual element causes the element to gain focus and become the active element.

When one object loses activation and another object becomes the activeElement, the onfocus event fires on the object becoming the activeElement only after the onblur event fires on the object losing activation. Use the focus events to determine when to prepare an object to receive input from the user.

Elements cannot receive focus until the document is finished loading.

For Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and later, focus on a document, and the active element of a document can be managed separately. The synchronous events onactivate and ondeactivate provide better control for managing activation changes.

As of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, elebrowserments retain focus within the current history when the user returns to a page. To avoid firing the onfocus event unintentionally for an element when the document loads, invoke the focus method on another element.

As of Internet Explorer 5, you can force elements that do not implicitly receive focus to receive focus by adding them to the document tabbing order using the TABINDEX attribute.

Sets focus to an object.

To invoke this event, do one of the following:

Click an object.
Use keyboard navigation.
Invoke the focus method.
Invoke the setActive method.

The pEvtObj parameter is required for the following interfaces:

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