SoftKeyboardBehavior not panning on Android

Question

Hello all,
I've been scratching my head with this for a while now and think I need to ask for help.
I have a TextField which is set to TextFieldType.INPUT. On Apple devices, when a user clicks on this text field, it focuses in on the text field like we'd expect it to, however on Android the soft keyboard appears over the text field making input awkward.
What I've tried so far:
Explicitly setting: <softKeyboardBehavior>pan</softKeyboardBehavior>
var locToGlob:Point = _textInput.localToGlobal(0,0);
this._textInput.softKeyboardInputAreaOfInterest = new Rectangle(locToGlob.x,locToGlob.y,_textInput.width ,_textInput.height);
But it just seems to completely ignore softKeyboardInputAreaOfInterest.
Does anybody know why this might be? I'm using AIR 4.0.
Thank you in advance for any help anyone may be able to offer.

Answer 1

Hi Andrew,
I haven't looked into this in a long while, so things may have changed since, but the last time I delt with this, I ended up disabling sofkeyboard behavior on both platforms, and handling my own offsetting ( via a tween ) of the Sprite containing the text field, so that the editable textfield would wind up above the keyboard.
On both platforms ( iOS + Android ), add the following in the manifest:
<softKeyboardBehavior>none</softKeyboardBehavior>
Here are the main bits code I used to handle this, to give you an idea.  Note: _softKeyboardDisplacer is my own tween class, but this would work with the regular Tween class as well.
        private var _searchTF:TextField;
        private var _softKeyboardDisplacer:SimpleTween; // displaces _categoriesListSP when the soft keyboard is called
        private var _softKeyboard:Boolean; // indicates if the soft keyboard is currently on or not
        private function initSearchField():void
            // search input text field
            var searchTFT:TextFormat = new TextFormat(Boolean(CONFIG::IOS) ? "Verdana" : "VerdanaFont", 30 * SM.UI_SCALE_800, 0x000000, true); // Note: "Verdana" is one of the system fonts on iOS devices.    Using the embedded version doesn't work for input text fields on iOS.
            _searchTF = Assets.getInputTF(0.7 * SM.stageWidth, NaN, searchTFT);
            with( _searchTF )
                addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_IN, onSoftKeyboardActivate, false, 0, true);
                addEventListener(FocusEvent.FOCUS_OUT, onSoftKeyboardDeactivate, false, 0, true);
            Align.align(_dictionaryCenter, _searchTF, Align.CENTER_VERT, 0, Align.CENTER_HORIZ, 0);
            _categoriesListSP.addChild( _searchTF );
            // Add soft keyboard listener
            _softKeyboardDisplacer = new SimpleTween(_categoriesListSP, "y", Interp.cubic, 0, 1, 0.3, true);
            _softKeyboardDisplacer.addEventListener(SimpleTweenEvent.MOTION_CHANGE, onSoftKeyboardDisplacerMotionChange, false, 0, true);
        private function onSoftKeyboardActivate(evt:FocusEvent):void
            _softKeyboard = true;
            _searchSuccessful = false;
            // open soft keyboard
            evt.target.requestSoftKeyboard(); // needed on Android, but doesn't work on iOS
            stage.focus = evt.target as InteractiveObject;
            var searchTFBounds:Rectangle = _searchTF.getBounds(stage);
            var finishY:Number = _categoriesListSP.y - ( (searchTFBounds.bottom - SM.stageHeight_d2 ) + SM.stageHeight * 0.05 );
            _softKeyboardDisplacer.stop();   
            _softKeyboardDisplacer.begin = _categoriesListSP.y;
            _softKeyboardDisplacer.finish = finishY;               
            _softKeyboardDisplacer.start();
        private function onSoftKeyboardDeactivate(evt:FocusEvent):void
            _softKeyboard = false;
            // do the search
            lookFor( _searchTF.text );
            if (!_searchSuccessful)
                _softKeyboardDisplacer.stop();
                _softKeyboardDisplacer.begin = _categoriesListSP.y;
                _softKeyboardDisplacer.finish = 0;           
                _softKeyboardDisplacer.start();
        private function toggleSoftKeyboard():void
            if (!_softKeyboard)
                // note: no need to go to the home page, bc _softKeyboardDisplacer will go there as soon as
                //the soft keyboard is activated (via onSoftKeyboardActivate() )
                // Below: requestSoftKeyboard() is needed on Android to bring-up soft keyboard,
                // but doesn't work on iOS ( hence the redundant stage.focus = _searchTF, below )
                _searchTF.requestSoftKeyboard();
                stage.focus = _searchTF;
            else closeSoftKeyboard();
        private function closeSoftKeyboard():void
            stage.focus = null; // this will close the soft keyboard
            _softKeyboard = false;
Cheers.