keydown listener for div element and "event forwarding"

[Gregor Kofler]

I'm trying to "detect" a keydown event in a DIV.

The idea have a keydown listener attached to document and forward the
event to the div. (I've searched the web, but it was impossible to
handle the noise on this topic.)

I've tried a simple prototype in Firefox and it seems to work.

function forward(e, elem) {
var f, p;
f = document.create Event("Event");
f.initEvent(e.t ype, true, true);
for(p in e) {
if(typeof f[p] === "undefined" ) {
f[p] = e[p];
}
}
elem.dispatchEv ent(f);
}

Three questions remain:
(a) is this whole approach crap?

(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly (quite a
few oldish sources on google say so, I couldn't confirm that, and the
official mozilla documentation is rather sparse on that)?

(c) did I overlook something serious in my forward function?

Gregor

[RobG]

Re: keydown listener for div element and "event forwarding&quot ;

Gregor Kofler wrote:

I'm trying to "detect" a keydown event in a DIV.
>
The idea have a keydown listener attached to document and forward the
event to the div. (I've searched the web, but it was impossible to
handle the noise on this topic.)
>
I've tried a simple prototype in Firefox and it seems to work.
>
function forward(e, elem) {
var f, p;
f = document.create Event("Event");
f.initEvent(e.t ype, true, true);
for(p in e) {
if(typeof f[p] === "undefined" ) {
f[p] = e[p];
}
}
elem.dispatchEv ent(f);
}
>
Three questions remain:
(a) is this whole approach crap?

Dunno, createEvent isn't supported by at least one popular browser so if
you care about 60~80% of web traffic, it might be. Also, there are
vaguaries with calling createEvent - even different versions of Mozilla
behave differently. So don't use it unless you are targetting a
specific browser that supports it.

(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly (quite a
few oldish sources on google say so, I couldn't confirm that, and the
official mozilla documentation is rather sparse on that)?

Mozilla? Hardly an authority on HTML - the W3C HTML 4.01 is:


<UR: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#edef-DIV >


It says the div element supports onkeydown, so you should have no
problems in conforming browsers.

(c) did I overlook something serious in my forward function?

That it's not necessary? :-)


--
Rob

[Gregor Kofler]

Re: keydown listener for div element and &quot;event forwarding&quot ;

RobG meinte:

>Three questions remain:
>(a) is this whole approach crap?

>
Dunno, createEvent isn't supported by at least one popular browser so if
you care about 60~80% of web traffic, it might be. Also, there are
vaguaries with calling createEvent - even different versions of Mozilla
behave differently. So don't use it unless you are targetting a
specific browser that supports it.

I know. It's a "prototype" . My library handles the different models.

>(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly (quite
>a few oldish sources on google say so, I couldn't confirm that, and
>the official mozilla documentation is rather sparse on that)?

<UR: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/struct/global.html#edef-DIV >
>
It says the div element supports onkeydown, so you should have no
problems in conforming browsers.

Sort of. If you fire a "keydown" onto the div or one comes bubbling
along from an input, it works. But just
clicking-on-a-div-and-hitting-a-key doesn't evoke any reaction in my
standard keydown listener.

>(c) did I overlook something serious in my forward function?

>
That it's not necessary? :-)

Nice try. ;-) I'd be happier without it, too. Though I'm not convinced
that I can solve it so easily.

Gregor

[Martin Honnen]

Re: keydown listener for div element and &quot;event forwarding&quot ;

Gregor Kofler wrote:

I'm trying to "detect" a keydown event in a DIV.

(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly

Yes, give the div a tabindex="0" and it becomes focussable and can
receive key events in IE, Mozilla, Opera.


--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Gregor Kofler]

Re: keydown listener for div element and &quot;event forwarding&quot ;

Martin Honnen meinte:

Gregor Kofler wrote:

>I'm trying to "detect" a keydown event in a DIV.

>
>

>(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly

>
Yes, give the div a tabindex="0" and it becomes focussable and can
receive key events in IE, Mozilla, Opera.

Thanks. That's what I'd been looking for. Is there any documentation for
this ..er... bizarre workaround?

Gregor

[Martin Honnen]

Re: keydown listener for div element and &quot;event forwarding&quot ;

Gregor Kofler wrote:

Thanks. That's what I'd been looking for. Is there any documentation for
this ..er... bizarre workaround?

I am sure MSDN documents that for IE, other browsers followed and I
think HTML 5 respectively whatwg documents (or rather specifies) that
somewhere: http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps...nt-work/#focus

--

Martin Honnen
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[dhtml]

Re: keydown listener for div element and &quot;event forwarding&quot ;

Gregor Kofler wrote:

Martin Honnen meinte:

>Gregor Kofler wrote:

>>I'm trying to "detect" a keydown event in a DIV.

>>
>>

>>(b) can keydown trigger a listener attached to the div directly

>>
>Yes, give the div a tabindex="0" and it becomes focussable and can
>receive key events in IE, Mozilla, Opera.

>
Thanks. That's what I'd been looking for. Is there any documentation for
this ..er... bizarre workaround?
>

Yes on MSDN and developer.mozil la.org.

The one problem I've found is that I couldn't can't get the onclick to
fire on Enter press on an arbitrary element.

Garrett

Gregor

--
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