Prevent Early Form Submission by Hijacking the Enter Key
A customer asked me to create a timecard form a few years ago. Everything with the form worked great but users would mistakenly press the enter key before their form was completed. They asked that I make the enter key move the cursor to the next input instead of submitting the form. This is how I'd do that using MooTools JavaScript.
The MooTools JavaScript
var inputs = $$('input.hijack');
$each(inputs,function(el,i) {
el.addEvent('keypress',function(e) {
if(e.key == 'enter') {
e.stop();
if(inputs[i+1]) { inputs[i+1].focus(); }
//last one?
if(i == inputs.length-1) { $('submit-button').focus(); }
}
});
});
When the customer hits the enter key, the cursor simply appears in the next input.
While I certainly wouldn't recommend this for every form, it definitely suited this customer's needs.
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Awesome!
Outstanding little clip…one I can put into use almost immediately!
Agreed! Excellent and well executed idea. As you say, probably not for all forms — and it might be useful to provide some education with respect to the tab key which is for all forms — but useful for critical processes that must not be interrupted. Well done.
How about the TAB key?