Multiple Browsers

nospam@example.com (Graham Cox) — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 14:10:18 +0100

Both IE and Firefox have standalone versions of their browsers that can be downloaded and "installed" onto your system for easy testing purposes. Microsoft seem to have removed this from IE as of the new IE7 however (possibly just in the betas) but it is possible to find downloads for IE7B1 and IE7B2 that have managed to get this working.

Standalone IE

Portable Firefox. This only seems to have 1.5.0.3 available, but it is possible to find 2.0B1 and 1.0.7 around as well.

Keyboard handling and Opera

nospam@example.com (Graham Cox) — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 13:52:31 +0100

Keyboard handling in Javascript events gives a whole new meaning to "impossible". It turns out that there is simply no reliable way to do this and still have your code work across the board.

The main problem here turns out to be Opera. Opera, in their ultimate wisdom, have decided that in the keypress event they will give you the Keyboard code for function keys, and Character code for all other keys. The problem is that they give you this code in the same variable in the event object.

The problem comes from the fact that the keyboard code and the character code can, and often do, overlap each other. For example, the character code for the period character is 46. It just so happens that the keyboard code for the delete key is also 46. Having compared the event object that is passed into the keypress event when the period and the delete key are pressed, the event objects are identical. There is not a single way to tell the difference between those two keys in that event!

As it happens, the reason I was trying to do this was to have a text field that only allows certain keys to be pressed. Period wasn't one of the keys, but I did want all the function keys to work (arrows, delete, home, end, etc). Another "feature" of Opera is that these keys can not be cancelled. As such, if I think it might be a period I can try and cancel it, and if it's a period it's cancelled and if it's a delete then it's not.

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Multiple Browsers

Keyboard handling and Opera