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Our AJAX app intercepts F9 to provide context sensitive help. It works in IE7+, Chrome, Safari and Opera, but not in Firefox. Help!

  • 4 replies
  • 2 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by lrirwin

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We researched IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera - looking for a common function key that was unused to utilize for our app's context help key - and settled on the F9 key. Is there a way to ensure that the F9 key-press can be passed to the page -- it appears to do nothing in Firefox, but is not passed to the page. -- Thanks!

We researched IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera - looking for a common function key that was unused to utilize for our app's context help key - and settled on the F9 key. Is there a way to ensure that the F9 key-press can be passed to the page -- it appears to do nothing in Firefox, but is not passed to the page. -- Thanks!

Chosen solution

Firefox does not populate window.event like IE does. It never has. Modern browsers can pass the event object from the inline handler. Here's an example. I don't know whether older browsers support this (it works in IE8):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Test F9 keydown inline handler</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Try F9<br><input type="text" name="textinput" size="25" value="sample value" onkeydown="keys(event,100)"></p>
<script type="text/javascript">
function keys(evt, arg){
  if (evt.which == 120 || evt.keyCode == 120){ // F9 key
    alert("Function passed: "+arg);
  }
  return false;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
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All Replies (4)

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For some reason I can't recall, I have a page with a script that detects F9 and Shift+F9 using the keyup event. It works for me in Firefox 21 on Windows 7 -- I can't vouch for "IceWeasel/3.5.16" which is entirely unfamiliar to me...

If you drop this into a page, does it work on your Firefox?

 function keys(key){
   if (!key) {
     key = window.event;
     key.which = key.keyCode;
   }
   if (key.which == 120){ // F9 key
     if (key.shiftKey){
       alert("Shift+F9 pressed!");
     } else {
       alert("F9 pressed without Shift!");
     }
   }
   return false;
 }
 document.onkeyup = keys;
 document.body.focus();

If the IceWeasel detection is incorrect, see: How to reset the default user agent on Firefox.

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Thanks jscher2000,

The function you provided, when added to out standard table maintenance html, traps the keypress - without even referencing it anywhere! But, I'm still having trouble getting it to work within a function referenced by the onkeydown property of an element...

Here is the code we have working with other browsers to pop-up contextual help...

The function: function checkKeydown(fnr) {

 // Get Field Specs String from fspecs array
 fhelp = fspecs[fnr];
 // if (window.event.keyCode==120) alert('Caught F9 keypress');
 if (window.event.keyCode==120) create_HelpWindow(fhelp);

}

This is the snippet where we are dynamically building input boxes and we provide the field number as a pointer into the field specifications array: inputline+=' onkeydown="checkKeydown(\+ fnr + '\')"'

So, when a user has the focus in a specific input box, they press the F9 key and a pop-up box containing help about that specific field is displayed... But that approach it isn't working in Firefox...

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Chosen Solution

Firefox does not populate window.event like IE does. It never has. Modern browsers can pass the event object from the inline handler. Here's an example. I don't know whether older browsers support this (it works in IE8):

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<title>Test F9 keydown inline handler</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>Try F9<br><input type="text" name="textinput" size="25" value="sample value" onkeydown="keys(event,100)"></p>
<script type="text/javascript">
function keys(evt, arg){
  if (evt.which == 120 || evt.keyCode == 120){ // F9 key
    alert("Function passed: "+arg);
  }
  return false;
}
</script>
</body>
</html>
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Thank you for the solution! It works! - (in all the browsers)...