Key input

In addition to the standard alphanumeric keys, key-based Nokia mobile devices feature a five-way keypad, which allows users to navigate and select items on the device screen. The navigation keypad has four navigation keys (up, down, left, and right) and a selection key at the center of the keypad. Devices can also have a complete QWERTY keyboard for faster text entry. Touch-enabled devices either replace or complement these physical keys with a touch screen. For more information about touch interaction, see section Touch input.

If you are developing your Flash Lite application for key-based devices, design the application to be as reliant on the navigation keys and softkeys as possible.

Figure: User input keys

Handling the softkeys

Softkeys are the control keys usually found right below the main screen on mobile devices. It is common practice to assign forward-going functions (continue, confirm, zoom, options, menus) to the left softkey and backward-oriented functions (cancel, back, exit) to the right one. By default, the left softkey opens the standard Options menu, and the right softkey exits the application.

When the Flash Lite application is not in full screen mode, the softkey labels are visible in the bottom pane of the device screen (see the following figure). When the Flash Lite application is in full screen mode, no text is displayed by default, so you must draw labels or graphics that notify the user about the softkey functions in the application.

Figure: Visible softkey labels outside the full screen mode

Some Nokia devices support screen orientation switching between portrait (more height) and landscape (more width) modes. For softkey placement in these situations, see Softkey Location and Screen Orientation for Nokia Devices at the Adobe Web site.

To define custom labels and functions for the softkeys in your Flash Lite application:

  1. In the first frame of the application, call the SetSoftKeys command of the fscommand2() method. This command maps new labels to the softkeys and disables the default softkey functions. First enter the label for the left softkey, then the label for the right softkey:

    fscommand2("SetSoftKeys", "LeftKeyLabel", "RightKeyLabel");

    Note that the selection key cannot be set in this manner.

  2. Define key press event handlers for the softkeys. Use the handlers to program the softkey functions. If you do not define the handlers, pressing the softkeys has no effect in your application. For more instructions, see section Handling key input.

For design considerations relating to softkeys, see section Laying out the softkeys.

Handling key input

For instructions on how to implement key input in your Flash Lite application, see section Handling key input.

© Nokia 2009.