Prevent jQuery UI dialog from setting focus to first textbox

jQuery UI 1.10.0 Changelog lists ticket 4731 as being fixed.

Looks like focusSelector was not implemented, but a cascading search for various elements was used instead. From the ticket:

Extend autofocus, starting with [autofocus], then :tabbable content, then buttonpane, then close button, then dialog

So, mark an element with the autofocus attribute and that is the element that should get the focus:

<input autofocus>

In the documentation, the focus logic is explained (just under the table of contents, under the title 'Focus'):

Upon opening a dialog, focus is automatically moved to the first item that matches the following:

1. The first element within the dialog with the autofocus attribute
2. The first :tabbable element within the dialog's content
3. The first :tabbable element within the dialog's buttonpane
4. The dialog's close button
5. The dialog itself

In jQuery UI >= 1.10.2, you can replace the _focusTabbable prototype method by a placebo function:

$.ui.dialog.prototype._focusTabbable = $.noop;

Fiddle

This will affect all dialogs in the page without requiring to edit each one manually.

The original function does nothing but setting the focus to the first element with autofocus attribute / tabbable element / or falling back to the dialog itself. As its use is just setting focus on an element, there should be no problem replacing it by a noop.

Add a hidden span above it, use ui-helper-hidden-accessible to make it hidden by absolute positioning. I know you have that class because you are using dialog from jquery-ui and it's in jquery-ui.

<span class="ui-helper-hidden-accessible"><input type="text"/></span>

Starting from jQuery UI 1.10.0, you can choose which input element to focus on by using the HTML5 attribute autofocus.

All you have to do is create a dummy element as your first input in the dialog box. It will absorb the focus for you.

<input type="hidden" autofocus="autofocus" />

This has been tested in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer (all latest versions) on February 7, 2013.

http://jqueryui.com/upgrade-guide/1.10/#added-ability-to-specify-which-element-to-focus-on-open