xamarin/Xamarin.Forms

`Focus` is not consistent on all platforms

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#5,616 opened on Mar 19, 2019

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e/7 :clock7:help wantedi/highinactivem/high impact :black_large_square:p/Androidp/iOS 🍎partner/cat 😻t/bug :bug:up-for-grabs

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Description

Description

This is a larger issue that requires some discussion. The basic summary is this:

All Xamarin.Forms controls are VisualElements, which contains a basic set of properties and events that should work on any VisualElement.

However, the Focus method is not functional on many mobile controls (e.g., Button, WebView) because there is no native option to put focus on such native objects.

Problems:

  1. For many reasons, a11y included, customers would like to put the focus on a Button (or other element) programmatically, and they are currently unable to do so on mobile platforms. Can we do this somehow?

  2. If the answer is No, then should we obsolete the Focus method from VisualElement and move it to a Focusable interface that we can then apply only to elements that are able to be focused? What do we do when that is platform specific?

  3. Moreover, the Focus method is supposed to return a bool value that indicates whether the platform was able to successfully focus the element; in the case of Button, this is erroneously returning true.

Contributor guide

Research direction
Investigate platform specific focus capabilities for Xamarin.Forms controls like Button and WebView. Determine if programmatic focus is possible on each platform. If not, propose an API redesign such as a IFocusable interface applied only to focusable elements. Also fix the Focus method returning true incorrectly for non focusable controls.
Tech stack
csharpandroidios
Domain
mobile devaccessibility
Issue type
Research
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
3
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Half day
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
C#Xamarin.Forms
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
40