Basic example of initKeyboardEvent

I’m trying to find a basic example of the use of initKeyboardEvent(). Ideally, I want to create a keyboard event where when the enter button is pressed when a user is typing in one input field, another input field will be shown using jQuery. Does anyone know where I can find a basic understandable example of using initKeyboardEvent()?

Answer

initKeyboardEvent was originallly initKeyEvent, there is a working example at MDN: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/event.initKeyEvent and here: http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/tutorials/javascript/domevents.

I’m sure you can find many examples through a web search: “javascript initkeyevent” and “javascript initKeyboardEvent”. Likely you will need to test for support to determine which to use.

Note also that initKeyboardEvent will be deprecated in DOM 4 (draft) in favour of Event constructor syntax, suggested in DOM 3 and implemented in DOM 4 (draft).

A simple feature test might be something like:

// Test for Event constructor
if (typeof Event != 'undefined') {
  var x, evt;
  try {
    x = new Event('keyboardEvent');
  } catch(e) {
    x = void 0;
  }
}

// test to see which method to use
if (typeof x != 'undefined') {
  alert('Use Event constructor');

} else if (document.createEvent) {
  evt = document.createEvent('KeyboardEvent');

  if (evt && evt.initKeyboardEvent) {
    alert('Use initKeyboardEvent');

  } else if (evt && evt.initKeyEvent) {
    alert('Use initKeyEvent');
  }
}

But for the time being it will likely be best to test for and use DOM 2 createEvent with initKeyEvent or initKeyboardEvent as appropriate.

Note that Firefox 14 doesn’t seem to support initKeyboardEvent but does support the Event constructor and initKeyEvent, IE 9 is the opposite and doesn’t support initKeyEvent or the Event constructor, but does support initKeyboardEvent.