You can use the Selection ActionScript object to get and set the current keypad focus, or to be notified when an object receives or loses keypad focus. This is useful, for example, if you want to automatically set the focus to a specific button when your application first loads. Or you may want to be notified when a specific object on the screen has received (or lost) keypad focus so that you can update the screen accordingly.

For example, the following code uses the Selection.setFocus() method to set focus to the button instance named login_btn:

Selection.setFocus(login_btn);

The Selection.onSetFocus event listener lets you determine when the keypad focus has changed. You can use this event listener, for example, to create a custom focus manager for input text fields, rather than use the default focus rectangle. The following procedure shows how to create a custom focus manager that changes the border color of the TextField object with focus. For a sample of the completed application (custom_focus_manager.fla), see the Flash Lite Samples and Tutorials page at www.adobe.com/go/learn_flt_samples_and_tutorials. Locate the .zip file for your version of ActionScript, download and decompress the .zip file, and then navigate to the Samples folder to access the sample.