How can I make event.srcElement work in Firefox and what does it mean?

Question

there is an if statement on my company's website that makes one web page imcompatible with firefox

if(event.srcElement.getAttribute("onclick") == null){ 
...code..
document.mainForm.submit();
}

I've commented out the if statement conditions and now its working with forefox. My question is, what is event.srcElement.getAttribute("onclick"), is it important, would it cause problems in the future. also, is there something similar i can replace the condition with so that it works on firefox?

Edit:

 function gotoRDManagerPT(PTId, bDDetailId) {
        if(!proceed()) return false;
        var target = event.target || event.srcElement; 
        if(event.target.getAttribute("onclick") == null) { 
            document.mainForm.displayRDManagerPT.value = "true";
            document.mainForm.PTId.value = PTId;
            document.mainForm.bDDetailId.value = bDDetailId;
            document.mainForm.submit();
        }
    }

Answer 1

srcElement is proprietary property originally coming from IE. The standardized property is target:

var target = event.target || event.srcElement;

if(target.onclick == null) { // shorter than getAttribute('onclick')
    //...
    document.mainForm.submit();
}

Also have a look at quirksmode.org - Event properties for more cross browser information.

---

Regarding the question what it is doing:

event.target / event.srcElement contains a reference to the element the event was raised on. getAttribute('onclick') == null checks whether a click event handler is assigned to element via inline event handling.

Is it important? We cannot say because we don't know what the ...code.. is doing.