Entry
How to disable a text field/text area?
Feb 25th, 2000 07:49
Martin Honnen,
With IE4/5 and NN6 you can set the
disabled
property, with older browsers you can set the onfocus handler to blur
so that the field is at least not editable.
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<STYLE>
</STYLE>
<SCRIPT>
function skip () { this.blur(); }
function disableTextField (field) {
if (document.all || document.getElementById)
field.disabled = true;
else {
field.oldOnFocus = field.onfocus;
field.onfocus = skip;
}
}
function enableTextField (field) {
if (document.all || document.getElementById)
field.disabled = false;
else {
field.onfocus = field.oldOnFocus;
}
}
</SCRIPT>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
<FORM NAME="aForm">
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="aField" VALUE="Kibology">
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="disable field"
ONCLICK="disableTextField(this.form.aField)"
>
<INPUT TYPE="button" VALUE="enable field"
ONCLICK="enableTextField(this.form.aField)"
>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Of course if you just want to statically disable a text field you can
use html attributes
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="aField" VALUE="Kibology" DISABLED>
with IE4/5 and NN6 and you can use
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="aField" VALUE="Kibology"
ONFOCUS="this.blur()"
>
for older browsers. To combine both (which has the advantage of
allowing copy/paste operations on the DISABLED text field with IE4/5
and NN6 use
<INPUT TYPE="text" NAME="aField" VALUE="Kibology" DISABLED
ONFOCUS="if (!document.all && !document.getElementById)
this.blur()"
>
