Event Listeners and Objects

This section provides a quick description of event trigger attributes on different HTML tags and the 'event' object representing the event with detail information about the event. A tutorial example is provided to display mouse location by adding a listener to the mouse-pushed-down event.

A typical Web browser also supports special HTML attributes to let you add event listeners and passing event objects. Here are few commonly used HTML attributes on various HTML tags:

More event trigger attributes will be introduced in other chapters in this book.

In each event trigger attribute, the browser will provide an object called "event", which presents this event and contains detailed information about this event. This "event" object has various properties and methods for you to use.

To illustrate some nice features of event triggers and the "event" object, I wrote this JavaScript tutorial example:

<html>
<!-- Event_Object_and_Trigger.html
   Copyright (c) 2008 HerongYang.com. All Rights Reserved.
-->
<head>
<title>Event Object and Trigger</title>
</head>
<body onMouseDown=
   "window.alert('X: '+event.clientX+', Y: '+event.clientY);">
<p>Click anywhere on the page to see location coordinates.</p>
</body>
</html>

In this tutorial example, the "onMouseDown" event trigger attribute on the "body" tag is used to add a short listener code to be executed with the user push down the mouse button on the page. The listener code uses the "event" object provided by the browser to retrieve x and y coordinates of the location.

The coordinates are reported back the user with an alert box by calling the "alert()" method on the "window" object. See the picture below:

Window Alert Box
Window Alert Box

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Introduction to JavaScript

 ECMAScript Language Specification and JavaScript Dialects

 Data Types, Variables and Expressions

 Flow Control Statements

 Creating, Accessing, and Manipulating Arrays

 Defining and Calling Functions

Web Browser Supporting JavaScript

 JavaScript Support in Web Browsers

 Including JavaScript Codes with HTML "script" Tags

 type="text/javascript" or language="JavaScript"

 JavaScript Version Supported by Browsers

 Including 'script' Tags in String Literals

 Escaping 'script' Tags in String Literals

 Using HTML Entities to Protect HTML Tags

 Including JavaScript Codes as External Files

 DOM API - The "document" Object

 DOM API - The "window" Object

 DOM API - The "window.open" Method

Event Listeners and Objects

 'javascript:' Pseudo-URL Addresses

 JavaScript Console in Google Chrome

 JavaScript Console in Mozilla Firefox

 JavaScript Console in Apple Safari

 JavaScript Console in IE (Internet Explorer)

 Server-Side and Client-Side Web Scripting

 Introduction to Objects

 Defining Your Own Object Types

 Inheritance of Properties and Methods through the Prototype Object Chain

 'jrunscript' - JavaScript Shell Command from JDK

 Using Functions as "Function" Objects

 Introduction to Built-in Object Types

 W3C's Document Object Model (DOM) Specifications

 AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML)

 References

 Full Version in PDF/EPUB