While building the site, I often made quick changes to the code in NetFTP, which let met edit code through my browser. However, tabs were always a problem - the browser would try to tab to the next text field instead of insert a \t character.

I looked at the solutions available - sure there’s tabinta, a Firefox extension made for doing just this - but I use Safari a lot, and on some pages I’d like to be able to tab through and not get stuck in a textarea - I want control over which pages override the default tab action.

Grab the bookmarklet after the jump.

So today I decided to end this problem once and for all by creating a little bookmarklet to override the default tab action. To add the bookmarklet, just drag and drop it into your bookmarks bar. Note: untested in IE.

Just click the bookmark whenever you encounter a page you want to use tabs in, and like magic the tab button will add a ‘\t’ to any textarea! You can test-drive it by simply clicking the link and then inserting some tabs into the comment form at the bottom of the page.

Most of the tabbing code was originally written by this guy, props to him for making a simple and cross-browser solution. I just took it, changed it a bit, and made it into a bookmarklet.

BTW: We know the site is having trouble parsing apps from the app store. This is due to PHP memory limits imposed by our host (because of our high traffic spike this past week). We’re going to have a dedicated server and be back up and running 100% by next week.

Tell me how it goes
-Joe

This entry was posted on Friday, September 12th, 2008 at 5:33 pm and is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.