This simple operation isn’t very obvious in ActionScript 3. The TextInput element has a boolean property called focusEnabled, but this doesn’t seem to do anything (it’s probably meant for other purposes, didn’t take the time to check).

The way achieve this is two-fold:

stage.focus = yourTextField;
yourTextField.setSelection(0,0);

If your textfield contains text and you wish to place the caret to the end, you would probably go about it like so:

stage.focus = yourTextField;
yourTextField.setSelection(0, yourTextField.length);

Makes sense now you know about it, huh?

It supports everything you’d expect from a well-seasoned code editor, amongst other features:

• Syntax Highlighting & Syntax Folding
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Code Auto-completion
• Regular Expression Search/Replace
• Zooming
• Brace & Indent Highlighting
• Macros
• Integration into the shell

You should see Notepad++ as an all-round replacement for Windows’ built-in Notepad and a lot more. It supports a vast array of programming languages, yet is specialized enough to be used for web authoring, too: it’ll recognize nested languages effortlessly, e.g. XHTML, CSS, PHP and Javascript in one page.

Notepad++ is completely free of charge and subject to the GPL license.

• Hop over to Sourceforge and download Notepad++ for free.
• Visit this project’s homepage.