How can I check if a key is pressed during the click event with jQuery?

Question

I would like to catch a click event with jQuery and be able to tell if a key was pressed at the same time so I can fork within the callback function based on the keypress event.

For example:

$("button").click(function() {
    if([KEYPRESSED WHILE CLICKED]) {
        // Do something...
    } else {
        // Do something different...
    }
});

Is this possible at all or how can it be done if it is possible?

Answer 1

You can easily detect the shift, alt and control keys from the event properties;

$("button").click(function(evt) {
  if (evt.ctrlKey)
    alert('Ctrl down');
  if (evt.altKey)
    alert('Alt down');
  // ...
});

See quirksmode for more properties. If you want to detect other keys, see cletus's answer.