Question

41

Detect left mouse button press

rated 0 times [ 44] [ 3] / answers: 1 / hits: 78692 / 14 Years ago, fri, october 15, 2010, 12:00:00

I hate this mess with the mouse buttons created by W3C an MS! I want to know if the left mouse button is pressed when I get a mousedown event.

I use this code

// Return true if evt carries left mouse button press

function detectLeftButton(evt) {

  // W3C

  if (window.event == null) {

    return (evt.button == 0)

  }

  // IE

  else {

    return (evt.button == 1);

  }

}

However, it does not work in Opera and Chrome, because it so happens that window.event exists there too.

So what do I do? I have some browser detection, but we all know it cannot be relied upon with all the masking some browsers do lately. How do I detect the left mouse button RELIABLY?

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kareem

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1 Year ago

answered 14 Years ago mckenna · Accepted Answer

Updated answer. The following will detect if the left and only the left mouse button is pressed:

function detectLeftButton(evt) {

    evt = evt || window.event;

    if (buttons in evt) {

        return evt.buttons == 1;

    }

    var button = evt.which || evt.button;

    return button == 1;

}

For much more information about handling mouse events in JavaScript, try http://unixpapa.com/js/mouse.html