ScriptUI Palette Focus After Clicking Button

[jHowardDesigns]

Hello, first time poster here!

I am working on developing an InDesign palette and I have run into an issue surrounding clicking buttons. The palette that I am working on is something that I want to stay open so that the user can interact with it while they work on their InDesign document. I want key focus to be on the document after clicking buttons in the palette and I am a bit stuck.

Here is my use case: I click a button in the palette and it selects multiple frames on the page. I then want to be able to use arrow keys to nudge the frames around (for example). I can’t use the arrow keys to move the objects until I click back into the document because the palette is holding key focus.

How do I tell my script to return focus to the InDesign document while keeping the palette open?

Any feedback is appreciated!

Thanks,

Jeremy

[Marc Autret · Accepted solution]

Hi Jeremy,

(…)

How do I tell my script to return focus to the InDesign document while keeping the palette open?

Invoke app.activate() whenever you need to give the focus back to InDesign.

Something like this:

myButton.onClick = function onClickHandler()

{

app.select( app.activeDocument.spreads[0].pageItems.everyItem().getElements() );

app.activate();

};

Best,

Marc

[jHowardDesigns]

I tried that but it's not working as expected. Here is a dummy script that I set up to test that approach:

#targetengine 'session'

var myDoc = app.activeDocument;

var myTextFrame = myDoc.textFrames[0];

var myDialog = new Window ("palette","Layers",undefined, {resizeable:true});

myDialog.preferredSize = [300,300];

var selectButton = myDialog.add("button", undefined, "Select The Things");

selectButton.onClick = function (){

    app.selection = myTextFrame;

    app.activate();

    };

myDialog.show();

app.activate();

[Marc Autret]

Well your dummy script works for me 😕

The app recovers the focus and I can move the text frame using arrow keys…

Tested on Win10 with ID 14.0.

Maybe a Mac issue (?)

@+

Marc

[jHowardDesigns]

Oh man, I bet it is a Mac issue... I hadn't considered that!

What a pain in the shoes...

[Chris Nitschke]

Hello,

Marc's answer sometimes worked for me on Win7 InDesign 2019 and sometimes didn't. Then I found out that in order to work 100% of the time I had to "reset" the selection first with 

     app.selection = null;

before I select whatever I wanted to select.

     app.selection = myInsertionPoint;
     app.activate();

Chris

[AnotherFrank]

Sorry for digging up such an old thread, but the answer Marc provided doesn't work for me either (nor Chris' tip with app.selection = null). With an open panel, app.activate() doesn't do anything on the Mac. Hope it's not just a bug.

Thanks!

[tobias.wantzen]

I can confirm this (non-)behaviour for Mac even all the years after the original post. Please vote on uservoice:

https://indesign.uservoice.com/forums/601180-adobe-indesign-bugs/suggestions/46096285-scirptui-in-ev...