jQuery .keypress & .keydown .which

javascript jquery keyboard keypress keydown
ChrisMJ picture ChrisMJ · Apr 17, 2012 · Viewed 42.3k times · Source

Ok so what is the difference in .keypress and .keydown/.keyup? At present I am using .keydown which returns a .which value of 38 for my key, now if i change it to .keypress it returns a value of 109 for that same key. What is the difference and why are the values different for the same key?

Answer

RvdK picture RvdK · Apr 17, 2012

If you press a button it fires a keydown and releasing it fires a keyup. The keypress usually comes between those two.

keydown and keyup talk about which key has been changed. keypress tells which character that key represents.

Note that this is all browser-dependent!

See this article about the differences between the key events as implemented on various browsers.

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