Uncontrolled focus order

Context

UI

Affects

User Experience,Accessibility

Problem

Using directional controls means that there a four directions of navigation up, down, left (previous) and right (next). By default the Android system computes the nearest neighbor ui element and set it appropriatly. In some cases this might not be the desired (unlogical) effect.

Refactorings

Control focus order

Resolves

Accessibility,User Experience

Affects

Solution

Use the XML attributes:

• android:nextFocusDown
• android:nextFocusLeft
• android:nextFocusRight
• android:nextFocusUp

It is also possible to set it at runtime via:

• setNextFocusDownId()
• setNextFocusLeftId()
• setNextFocusRightId()
• setNextFocusUpId()

It might be necessary to set the android:focusable attribute first (on elements that do not set it true by default).

Links

• Controlling focus order
• Accessibility: Are You Serving All Your Users?

Related

• Interrupting from background
• Network & IO operations in main thread
• Not descriptive UI
• Public data
• Set config changes
• Tracking Hardware Id
• Unnecessary permission
• Untouchable

by Martin Brylski 2013