Do you guys know any drawback of focusing on a text field on a web page ? It's pretty useful when you know users will use this text field more than others (like on the google homepage), but it's a bit "offensive", so I wondered if there's something bad that could happen (on mobile devices for example)
Answer
Normally the Backspace key takes you back a page as it is a keyboard shortcut for the Back button. When an input field is focused, the backspace only works within the input field. For many keyboard users (as in prefer the keyboard and avoid switching between keyboard and mouse) it therefore is a definite drawback when a site auto focuses an input field arbitrarily.
That said, I do not like pages not to auto focus on the first field when the whole purpose of the page is to fill out a form and submit it.
So I guess basically the rule for me would be: auto focus for data-entry forms; do not auto focus when input is a secondary (or even lower) item on a page.
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