Tabbing (Moving Focus)

Introduction

Gum supports tabbing focus between controls. Tabbing can be performed with the keyboard or gamepad.

Keyboard Tabbing

The keyboard can be used to interact with controls. Keyboards can be used to:

• Tab forward and back to pass focus to new controls

• To click controls by pressing enter

• To perform control-specific actions such as changing the value of a slider

To enable gamepad control, add the following code. This code only needs to run once, so add it to your game's Initialize or other code which runs at startup.

GumUI.UseKeyboardDefaults();

Keep in mind that a control must first be explicitly set to receive keyboard input.

For example, the following code gives a Button focus assuming MyButton is a valid button:

MyButton.IsFocused = true;

Note that TextBox and PasswordBox automatically have IsFocused set to true when clicked on.

Controls can be skipped when tabbed by setting GamepadTabbingFocusBehavior. For example the following code results in a button being skipped if it receives focus from tabbing:

MyButton.GamepadTabbingFocusBehavior = TabbingFocusBehavior.SkipOnTab;

Despite its name, the GamepadTabbingFocusBehavior property controls tabbing for both gamepad and keyboard tabbing. Future versions of Gum may change this property to more clearly indicate its purpose.

Gamepad Tabbing

To enable gamepad support in your game:

1. Be sure to have a gamepad plugged in. Any gamepad that is usable in MonoGame will also work as a gamepad in Gum Forms

2. Add the gamepad to the FrameworkElement.GamepadsForUiControl. You can add multiple gamepads for multiplayer games.

3. Set the initial control to have focus by setting its IsFocused = true

For example, the following code enables gamepad control for a game assuming MyButton is a valid button:

// The first gamepad:
var gamepad = GumUI.Gamepads[0];
// If this code is run multiple times then the gamepad
// may get added multiple times as well. To be safe, clear
// the list:
FrameworkElement.GamePadsForUiControl.Clear();
FrameworkElement.GamePadsForUiControl.Add(gamepad);
MyButton.IsFocused = true;