# 508 tabbing and textAreas

**URL:** <https://forum.kirupa.com/t/508-tabbing-and-textareas/265601>\
**Category:** flash\
**Created:** [July 10, 2008, 5:02pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/508-tabbing-and-textareas/265601 "2008-07-10T17:02:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![GrndMasterFlash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@GrndMasterFlash](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/GrndMasterFlash)\
**Post date:** [July 10, 2008, 5:02pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/508-tabbing-and-textareas/265601/1 "2008-07-10T17:02:45Z")

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ok, so one developer made a spaghetti mess of and app, that got handed over to me to make 508 compliant, now im the type of guy that shuns components cause i prefer to build everything from scratch to keep better control.  
however ever this app is full of text components and when i try to tab around it will only jump back and forth from text components.  
how the heck can i disable the tabbing on the text components so that my structured tab order isn’t sabotaged?:crying:

to save time and guess i have already tried (say the components name=txt)

txt.enabled = false;  
txt.tabEnabled = false;  
txt.focusEnabled = false;

if some one out there could help me out with this that’s like at least +10 points

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![GrndMasterFlash](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/71c47a/32.png) [@GrndMasterFlash](https://forum.kirupa.com/u/GrndMasterFlash)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2008, 6:41pm UTC](https://forum.kirupa.com/t/508-tabbing-and-textareas/265601/2 "2008-07-14T18:41:03Z")

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so, i took a while but i found out what the problem was.  
if you have a component it will override the focus manager, and it’s kind of a pain but here is how i worked around this one.

\<say im using two i want the focus manager to recognize my two mc and there is a component on the stage\>

mc\_1.tabEnabled = true;  
mc\_2.tabEnabled = true;

addEventListener(FocusEvent.KEY\_FOCUS\_CHANGE, onKeyFocusChange);

function onKeyFocusChange(e:FocusEvent):void  
{  
var focusObj = e.target  
focusObj.focusRect = true;  
}

kind of a weird problem but hope this might help some one down the line :beer2: