Intercepting all key presses with jQuery before they are processed

Question

I have a web page and I need to intercept all keypresses before they get dispatched to whatever element in the dom has the focus. When the user types something like ~

Answer 1

read this about event bubbling. http://www.quirksmode.org/js/events_order.html

this works for firefox:

 document.addEventListener('keypress',function(e){alert('body1'); e.cancelBubble  = true;},true)

I'm not sure what will work for i.e. as the document i linked to says in i.e. the event bubbles from inwards upwards. you may have to try a different way round this. e.g. you could add an event handler to all the element that you do not want them handling the event and then prevent them handling the event in that event handler.