HTML input fields does not get focus when clicked

Question

I have a problem and I can't figure out what exactly is causing this behavior. I cannot access my input fields and textareas on my HTML form.

Unfortunately, the JS, HTML and CSS are very large, so I can't really post it all here.

Can anybody tell me what to look for when debugging this strange behavior?

UPDATE

If I move the cursor over the input field I can see the text cursor, but when I click it the field does not get the focus. I can access the field via pressing the Tab key and if I right click on it and then click on the field I also get the focus for it.

...and nope, they don't have the disabled or readonly attributes ;-)

Answer 1

when i click it the field does not get the focus. i can access the field via pressing the "tab-key"

It sounds like you've cancelled the default action for the mousedown event. Search through your HTML and JS for onmousedown handlers and look for a line that reads.

return false;

This line may be stopping you from focusing by clicking.

---

Re: your comment, I'm assuming you can't edit the code that adds this handler? If you can, the simplest solution is to just remove the return false; statement.

is there a way to just add functionality to the event-trigger by not overwriting it?

That depends on how the handler is attached. If it's attached using the traditional registration method, e.g. element.onmousedown, then you could create a wrapper for it:

var oldFunc = element.onmousedown;
element.onmousedown = function (evt) {
    oldFunc.call(this, evt || window.event);
}

Since this "wrapper" doesn't return false, it will not cancel the default action (focusing) for the element. If your event is attached using an advanced registration method, such as addEventListener or attachEvent then you could only remove the event handler using the function name/reference and reattach it with a wrapped function similar to the above. If it's an anonymous function that's added and you can't get a reference to it, then the only solution would be to attach another event handler and focus the element manually using the element.focus() method.

Answer 2

I had this problem too. I used the disableSelection() method of jQuery UI on a parent DIV which contained my input fields. In Chrome the input fields were not affected but in Firefox the inputs (and textareas as well) did not get focused on clicking. The strange thing here was, that the click event on these inputs worked.

The solution was to remove the disableSelection() method for the parent DIV.

Answer 3

Use the onclick="this.select()" attribute for the input tag.

Answer 4

I know this is a very old thread, but this just happened to me recently; took me a while to figure it out.

This same issue can be caused by putting 'input' elements inside of pair of 'label' tags.

In my case, I had intended to create a pair of 'div' tags but instead I accidently created a pair of 'label' tags, then inserted some text input fields 'input type="text"..' using DOM.

It displayed normally on the screen, but when I clicked on any of the text fields, the cursor kept jumping back to the first 'input' and really acting erratic.

Took me a while to figure this out because this behavior is subtle, and not at all what I would have expected from making this kind of mistake.

bsnider

Answer 5

I've been struggling with the same problem a while ago. I was using the jquery.layout plugin in a modal jquery-ui dialog and I couldn't access any of the fields in it.

It appeared to be a z-index problem (some div was over my input fields, so I couldn't click them). You should check it out and try changing the z-index value of your input fields.

Answer 6

This happens sometimes when there are unbalanced <label> tags in the form.

Answer 7

I had this problem too, and in my case I found that the color of the font was the same color of the background, so it looked like nothing happened.

Answer 8

I have read all the answers above, and some directed me to the problem, but not to the solution for the problem.

The root cause of the problem is disableSelection(). It is causing all the problems, but removing it is not a solution, as (at least in 2016 or slightly before), on touch-screen devices, you "have" to use this if you want to be able to move objects with jQuery.

The solution was to leave the disableSelection() to the sortable element, but also add a binding action just above:

 $('#your_selector_id form').bind('mousedown.ui-disableSelection selectstart.ui-disableSelection', function(event) {
    event.stopImmediatePropagation();
 })

The form in the jQuery element is just to stop propagation on the form, as you might need propagation on some elements.

Answer 9

This can occur in bootstrap if you do not place your columns inside a <div class ='row'>. The column floats are not cleared and you could get the next column overlying the previous, hence clicks wont hit the dom elements where you expect.

Answer 10

If you are faced this problem while using canvas with DOM on mobile devices, the answer of Ashwin G worked for me perfectly, but I did it through javascript

var element = document.getElementById("myinputfield");
element.onclick = element.select();

After, everything worked flawlessly.

Answer 11

I had the similar issue - could not figure out what was the reason, but I fixed it using following code. Somehow it could not focus only the blank inputs:

$('input').click(function () {
        var val = $(this).val();
        if (val == "") {
            this.select();
        }
    });

Answer 12

For Anyone Using Electron

For anyone having this issue with Electron specifically, the problem for me was using alert before selecting the input fields. Apparently alert and confirm aren't entirely supported by Electron, and therefore can mess up input fields. If you'd still like to use them, refer to this post: https://stackoverflow.com/a/38859135/12293837

Answer 13

I had this problem because of this code:

$("#table tbody tr td:first-child").bind("mousedown", function(e){
    e.preventDefault();
    $(this).parents('tr').removeClass('draggable');
});

I resolved it by removing

e.preventDefault();

New code:

$("#table tbody tr td:first-child").bind("mousedown", function(){
    $(this).parents('tr').removeClass('draggable');
});

Answer 14

Just in case someone else is looking for this answer, we had a similar problem and solved it by changing the z-index of the input tags. Apparently some other divs had extended too far and were overlapping the input boxes.

Answer 15

I had this problem for over 6 months, it may be the same issue. Main symptom is that you can't move the cursor or select text in text inputs, only the arrow keys allow you to move around in the input field. Very annoying problem, especially for textarea input fields. I have this html that gets populated with 1 out of 100s of forms via Javascript:

<div class="dialog" id="alert" draggable="true">
    <div id="head" class="dialog_head">
        <img id='icon' src='images/icon.png' height=20 width=20><img id='icon_name' src='images/icon_name.png' height=15><img id='alert_close_button' class='close_button' src='images/close.png'>
    </div>
    <div id="type" class="type"></div>
    <div class='scroll_div'>
        <div id="spinner" class="spinner"></div>
        <div id="msg" class="msg"></div>
        <div id="form" class="form"></div>
    </div>
</div>

Apparently 6 months ago I had tried to make the popup draggable and failed, breaking text inputs at the same time. Once I removed draggable="true" it works again!

Answer 16

I'm using JQuery UI and Bootstrap so I faced this issue and I think it is a conflict between the two as in normal case the textarea or the input filed is editable by nature but I made this solution after testing all the above answers but none solve the cross browser support for all major browsers, but I solved it and I like to share my solution you can use it on input text and textarea

(Tested on Desktop: IE (All Versions), Chrome, Safari, Windows Edge, Firefox, Visual Studio Cordova Ripple Viewer on Windows & Visual Studio Cordova Windows 10 Store App)

(Tested on Mobile: Chrome, Firefox, Android Internet Browser & Visual Studio Cordova App on Android & Visual Studio Cordova Windows 8 + 8.1 + 10 Phone App)

This is the HTML Code:

<textarea contenteditable id="textarea"></textarea>

This is The CSS Code:

textarea {
    -webkit-user-select: text !important;
    -khtml-user-select: text !important;
    -moz-user-select: text !important;
    -ms-user-select: text !important;
    user-select: text !important;
    /*to make sure that background color and text color is not the same (from the answers above)*/
    background-color:#fff !important;
    color:#733E27 !important;
 }        

This Is The JQuery Code On Document Ready

$("textarea").click(function() {
        setTimeout(function(){
            $("textarea").focus();
            //add this if you are using JQuery UI (From The Solutions Above)
            $("textarea").enableSelection();
            var val = $("textarea").val();
            if (val.charAt(val.length-1) !== " " && val.length !== 1) {
                alert(val.length);
                val += " ";
            }
            $("textarea").val(val);
        }, 0);
    });

    if (navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Safari') !== -1 || navigator.userAgent.indexOf('Chrome') !== -1) {
        //alert('Its Safari or chrome');
        $("textarea").onfocus(function(e) {
            setTimeout(function(){
                var end;
                if ($("textarea").val === "") {
                    end = 0;
                } else {
                    end = $("textarea").val.length;
                }
                if ($("textarea").setSelectionRange) {
                    var range = document.getElementById('textarea').createTextRange();
                    if (range) {
                        setTimeout(range, 0, [end, end]);
                    } else { // IE style
                        var aRange = document.getElementById('textarea').createTextRange();
                        aRange.collapse(true);
                        aRange.moveEnd('character', end);
                        aRange.moveStart('character', end);
                        aRange.select();
                    }
                }
                e.preventDefault();
                return false;
            }, 0);
        });
    }

You can test it on my web application at www.gahwehsada.com

Answer 17

Its worth adding that having the property pointer-events:none on your input label will also produce this unwanted behaviour.

Answer 18

It might be because of invalid for attribute in the label attribute

<input type="text" id="your_name" name="your_name">
<label for="your_name">Your Name</label>

<input type="text" id="your_email" name="your_name">
<label for="your_name">Your Name</label>

I have tried to update the for attribute in the second label to your_email instead of your_name and its works for me

<label for="your_email">Your Name</label>

Answer 19

When you say

and nope, they don't have attributes: disabled="disabled" or readonly ;-)

Is this through viewing your html, the source code of the page, or the DOM?

If you inspect the DOM with Chrome or Firefox, then you will be able to see any attributes added to the input fields through javasript, or even an overlaying div

Answer 20

I just found another possible reason for this issue, some input textboxes were missing the closing "/", so i had <input ...> when the correct form is <input ... />. That fixed it for me.

Answer 21

In my case it was Bootstrap popup in opened state. Text input was in another calendar popup on top of Bootstrap one, input got its focus back after removing tabindex="-1" attribute from Bootstrap modal.

Answer 22

iPhone6 chrome

Problem for me was placing the input field inside <label> and <p>

like this :

<label>
  <p>
     <input/>
  </p>
</label>

I changed them to

<div>
  <div>
     <input/>
  </div>
</div>

And it works for me .

After check this answer, Please check other answers in this page, this issue may have different reasons

Answer 23

This will also happen anytime a div ends up positioned over controls in another div; like using bootstrap for layout, and having a "col-lg-4" followed by a "col-lg=8" misspelling... the right orphaned/misnamed div covers the left, and captures the mouse events. Easy to blow by that misspelling, - and = next to each other on keyboard. So, pays to examine with inspector and look for 'surprises' to uncover these wild divs.

Is there an unseen window covering the controls and blocking events, and how can that happen? Turns out, fatfingering = for - with bootstrap classnames is one way...

Answer 24

I had the same problem. I eventually figured it out by inspecting the element and the element I thought I had selected was different element. When I did that I found there was a hidden element that had z-index of 9999, once I fixed that my problem went away.

Answer 25

the problem for me was that I was using class="modal fade", I changed it for class="modal hide". That solved the issue.

Answer 26

I had the same problem. Tore my hair for hours trying all sorts of solutions. Turned out to be an unclosed a tag.Try validate your HTML code, solution could be an unclosed tag causing issues

Answer 27

I had this issue using Bootstrap + contact form 7. I for some reason I put the label as the container of the form and that was the issue for not being selectable on mobile.

<label>
    <contact form>...</contact form>
</label>

Seemed to break all inputs except the first input and the submit.

Answer 28

I had the same issue and the fix was to remove the placeholders and I changed the design of the form to use labels instead of placeholders...

Answer 29

I had this issue caused by a sort of overlap of a div element with a bootstrap class ="row" over a "brother" div element with the class="col", the first hid the focus of the second div element.

I solved taking outer the div row element from that level of the divs' tree and so rebalancing bootstrap logical hierarchy based on the row and col classes.

Answer 30

I had this same issue just now in React.

I figured out that in the Router, Route. We cannot do this as it causes this issue of closing the mobile keyboard.

<Route 
 path = "some-path"
 component = {props => <MyComponent />}
 />

Make sure and use the render instead in this situation

<Route 
 path = "some-path"
 render = {props => <MyComponent />}
 />

Hope this helps someone

Daniel