Netscape 6, Part III: The Event Model
Setting Events in Internet Explorer
In order to understand the new event model in Netscape 6, you need also to refresh your knowledge of how it is done in Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer introduced the concept of event bubbling. As oppose to Netscape Navigator 4.x where events dive from the
window object to the target object, an event in Internet Explorer bubbles from the target object outwards to the
window object, propagating through all involved objects along the way. Each object can intercept the event and process it. The order of event interception is determined by the bubbling order. The target object is always first, followed by any higher objects in the hierarchy. Let's take an example.
Our sample paragraph includes a single sentence, part of it in bold. We attach an
onClick event handler to both the paragraph tag (
<P>) and the bold tag (
onClick = "alert('Thank you for clicking...!');
Both event handlers pop up an alert box. First, is the bold text's alert box ('Thank you for clicking somewhere in the bold section!'), followed by the paragraph's alert box (
'Thank you for clicking somewhere in the paragraph!'). You can see by the order of the alert boxes that the bold text object processes the event before the paragraph object. Here is the full listing of the HTML code:
And here is the result. Try clicking the bold text:
<BLOCKQUOTE> <P onClick="alert('Thank you for clicking somewhere in the paragraph!')"> This is a paragraph, and <B onClick="alert('Thank you for clicking somewhere in the bold section!')"> these are bold words in the paragraph</B>. </P> </BLOCKQUOTE>
This is a paragraph, and these are bold words in the paragraph.
Next: How to set event handlers in Netscape 6