Event.keyCode Demystified

Author:Mudassar Khan

event.keycode not working in Mozilla?

How to use event.keycode in Mozilla?

How to use event.keycode for Firefox?

This is a common issue faced by many is using event.keyCode to get the key ASCII value in browsers other than Internet Explorer. So what to do?

But the fact is Mozilla Firefox has event.keyCode event only difference is the place where you use it

https://developer.mozilla.org/En/DOM/Event.keyCode

So now I’ll explain how to use event

ASCII Code on keypress event

function GetKeyCode(evt)

{

var keyCode;

if(evt.keyCode > 0)

{

keyCode = evt.keyCode;

}

else if(typeof(evt.charCode) != "undefined")

{

keyCode = evt.charCode;

}

alert("You pressed : " + keyCode);

}

</script>

<asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server" onkeypress = "GetKeyCode(event)" />

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox has the ASCII code of all keys in the event.keyCode whenever it is called on keyup and keydown events. But when you call it on keypress event it stores the ASCII codes of all keys that produce a character that is visibile like A - Z, 0 - 9, and other character keys in charCode while keyCode has ASCII codes of all non character keys like BACKSPACE, SHIFT, CTRL, etc.

Internet Explorer, Chrome, Safari

IE, Chrome and Safari has ASCII code of only character keys when called on keypress event.

Opera

In Opera you will get ASCII code of the all the keys in the event.keyCode event

So in case when you want to get ASCII codes on keypress event you will need to use the following function.

ASCII Code on keyup and keydown events

In keyup and keydown events you can get ASCII codes of all the keys in

Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Apple Safari using the following JavaScript function

function GetKeyCode(evt)

{

alert("You pressed : " + evt.keyCode);

}