I must be missing something. In a desktop app (MacOS) I have a textbox in tab order ahead of a checkbox and followed in tab order by another textbox. When the user tabs out of the first textbox, the focus goes directly to the second textbox, bypassing the checkbox control. The checkbox has “allow tab stop” turned on.
I can still click on the checkbox with the mouse.
Near as I can tell from the docs, this is the behavior with “allow tab stop” turned off. Yet, it is on.
What am I missing?
The macOS setting that allows you to select all controls by keyboard.
Here’s where it is in Big Sur, they move it all the time though:
Perhaps you want to enable full keyboard access in the Accessibility preference pane.
Another way to obtain tab stop for controls that do not do it is to lay the CheckBox on top of a canvas, with tab stop.
Thanks guys, I had a feeling it was some weird Apple thing – or something equally dumb. TBH I have been a back end guy since dirt was invented and this is the first GUI I’ve put together in at least 15 years and my first ever on Mac OS. I’m slowly remembering the reasons why I got that way, lol.
Another way to obtain tab stop for controls that do not do it is to lay the CheckBox on top of a canvas, with tab stop.
Thanks … that is the kind of clever circumlocution I had hoped someone else had solved.
Do I care enough to do that? Probably not unless a user demands it, but now I know how.
FWIW, it has always been so (as far as I’ve used Macs, around 1995), that tabbing on Mac is only for text fields and listboxes by default.
to do that in you machine. the situation is different on customers machines (you may ask your users to do that…)
