I’d like to say that the author is completely correct in that for large websites it is very inconvenient to have the textfield focus after the loading of the entire page.

However, is this small and simple Javascript an inconvenience of web designers that have large amounts of data on their pages…

… or is the large amounts of API code (Facebook widgets, Spry, JQuery, etc.) being inserted onto a page the larger problem?

Even without this JavaScript, I find that there are too many websites that sloppily encoding APIs as small as AdSense and as bulky as ning and Facebook plug-ins directly into the code of pages and templates not realizing…

… that it’s this code that is actually causing a loading problem.

Either way, I’d recommend designers of large websites to really consider if this small onLoad code is your problem, or a robust amount of monetizing (advertisement) and overly-bulky code the real problem.

@comment:

EXCELLENT comment. Although keeping your code clean and neat is important at the end of your development, this “culture” of modularizing everything is causing a portion of developers to become “cookie cutter” learners, knowing what to implement where, but not exactly knowing why.

@lothop

While I bookmarked and REALLY LIKED this post…

I LOVED your unassuming and ridiculously short post.

I decided to implement your input tag “autofocus” suggestion and has been running faster compared to the body “autofocus” orginally discussed.

KUDOS!

Devil’s Hackvocate
“Remember Oscar Grant”