onkeydown Attribute

Where to use the onkeydown Attribute

Description

The onkeydown attribute is a common attribute which may be used on most elements to specify script to be executed when the element has focus and a key is pressed down. This means that it only useful on those elements which can receive focus (such as text input fields). If the onkeydown script returns false, this prevents the user's keystroke from being registered.

See also the onkeypress and onkeyup attributes.

This site is not intended to act as a scripting reference, so the precise details of the differences between onkeydown and onkeypress are not covered here.

If you use this attribute (or any attributes of Type Script) the MIME type of the scripting language used should always be provided in a Content-Script-Type HTTP header.

It is good practice not to use these attributes, however, and instead to include external scripts (via script elements) which add any handlers unobtrusively. This makes code more self-contained and also the XHTML is easier to maintain if it doesn't contain any events attributes.