Disable Function Key F3 in Internet Explorer

Question

I would like to disable function keys F1 and F3 while playing
my flash movie in internet explorer. I am using these keys within
Flash to do some actions.
I got the script working for Function Key F1 using the
following script
<script language="javascript">
document.onhelp = function() {return(false);}
window.onhelp = function() {return(false);}
</script>
But unable to make it to work for function key F3.
Thanks in advance,
Desmond

Answer 1

Hi des_shun, I have workaround for this issue.
First thing we have to do is disable keyboard event for F3 key on HTML document so that even if focus is on html document, default Search functionality will not popup. Next thing is, flash must contain KeyboardEvent listener for keyboard response. This is where we will keep our custom F3 functionality. This setting works well on Chrome & FireFox.
Now IE thing.
The prolem with IE is that if any one of F3, F5, F6,F7 & F11 key is pressed, when the focus is on flash movie it directly executes the default browser functions like searching, refreshing etc never allowing flash to execute its keyeventlistener. But if focus is on document body, then F3 and other keys work fine.
Here is the catch.
All we have to do is whenever focus is shifted to flash, we should revert that focus to document body.
Here is how we can do this.
Capture the MouseClick event in your flash movie. Then in this mouseclick event handler, call  javascript function to change focus to document again. Below is the sample code.
//Flash Code
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,mClick);
function mClick(event:MouseEvent)
          ExternalInterface.call("changeFocus");
// Javascript Code
<script type="text/javascript"</script>
          function changeFocus()
                         document.body.focus();
    </script>
Thats it!