Catch browser's "zoom" event in JavaScript

javascript events zoom
user123093 picture user123093 · Jun 15, 2009 · Viewed 165.7k times · Source

Is it possible to detect, using JavaScript, when the user changes the zoom in a page? I simply want to catch a "zoom" event and respond to it (similar to window.onresize event).

Thanks.

Answer

Ian Elliott picture Ian Elliott · Jun 15, 2009

There's no way to actively detect if there's a zoom. I found a good entry here on how you can attempt to implement it.

I’ve found two ways of detecting the zoom level. One way to detect zoom level changes relies on the fact that percentage values are not zoomed. A percentage value is relative to the viewport width, and thus unaffected by page zoom. If you insert two elements, one with a position in percentages, and one with the same position in pixels, they’ll move apart when the page is zoomed. Find the ratio between the positions of both elements and you’ve got the zoom level. See test case. http://web.archive.org/web/20080723161031/http://novemberborn.net/javascript/page-zoom-ff3

You could also do it using the tools of the above post. The problem is you're more or less making educated guesses on whether or not the page has zoomed. This will work better in some browsers than other.

There's no way to tell if the page is zoomed if they load your page while zoomed.

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