Backspace is just ugly in Maintain. I have read-only fields that, if the user clicks on them and tries to backspace over the contents, drop Maintain. The entire session and all unsaved data is lost. Likely this has been addressed here before but I simply cannot find it. Searching for Maintain and Backspace brings no results.

It will now.

What is the official solution for this issue? Please note that capturing the keystroke in each and every field will be a really really difficult thing for me to do and maintain.


J.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kerry,

MAINTAIN – Don’t Click Back

Most Maintain applications are persistent. This means that while the application is running, there is a connection to the server. It also means that you should only use the application’s navigation to move between screens. Using the browsers navigation can yield messages like “The application has been disconnected from the server’ or ‘Form submitted out of order.’ Clicking the Backspace key while your cursor is on a protected area of the form, certain function keys, and/or the right-click context menu can also cause these messages.

Starting in version 7.13 we give you the ability to easily restrict function key and menu use. There is a file name mntonload.js that is located in \ibi_html\javaassist\ibi\html\main. Every time a Maintain application is deployed, this file gets included. You can enhance the behavior of every Maintain created at your site by adding the functionality to this file.

In this case, we are going to uncomment the BlockKeys() function call. By doing this, when a user presses F2 – F12, backspace, home, control or the Microsoft key the message “That functionality is restricted” appears on the message line of the browser.

If you want to disable the right-click context menu, you have to uncomment the line;
document.oncontextmenu = disable_context_menu;
which appears further down in this file. You must also uncomment that last line of the file:
document.onmousedown=click;
If the user right-clicks on the Maintain form they get the message: "Right click option is not available.” This message can be customized as well.

While we cannot completely stop a user from incorrectly exiting an application, this technique ensures that they will not do it accidentally.


Mark Derwin

Thank you for the exceptionally detailed reply.

It appears I have already enabled that code, so the situation I am looking at is falling through the cracks somehow. I'll keep looking.

J.

John, I am curious.

While a browser has focus on a text object than a backspace erases a character. However if the focus is on the page and you hit the backspace the browser thinks that you want to back a page in history.

Perhaps since the fileds are read-only they are processed like the second item.

Can you capture attempts at going back in history with javascript and have it do nothing?

Fernando

John

I use the BlockKeys function and, for me, it traps the backspace key correctly under all circumstances, even RO fields, and is cross browser compliant.

Playing with browser history, and trying to trap going back, is possible (onunload and onbeforeunload), but can produce very flaky results and is not recommended.

I'll keep playing with this and let you guys know if I come up with anything that seems to close the door on the problem.

Thank you all for responding! See you at Summit.

Sag.

My suggestion is to never use persistent maintain.

It is a little more work, but you don't have to worry about being disconnected.

Using non-persistent Maintain will not overcome the frustration of the user when losing data entered onto the screen; it's not the disconnection that is the issue. It really makes no difference in this scenario whether the application is persistent or not.

Persistence has benefits when keeping track of changes being made to records, but not when just adding records. Some applications lend themselves to non-persistence and some to persistence, also some applications can be coded easily for non-persistence, but some are a nightmare to code and persistence is the best choice.

If you really believe that non-persistence is the way forward, why not code base HTML and Modify