How can I make event.srcElement work in Firefox and what does it mean?

Question

there is an if statement on my company\'s website that makes one web page imcompatible with firefox

if(event.srcElement.getAttribute(\"onclick\") == null){ 
         


        

Answer 1

In IE the event object is available in the window object already; in Firefox, it's passed as a parameter in the event handler.

Example

JavaScript:

function toDoOnKeyDown(evt)

{

    //if window.event is equivalent as if thie browser is IE then the event object is in window
    //object and if the browser is FireFox then use the Argument evt

    var myEvent = ((window.event)?(event):(evt));
    //get the Element which this event is all about 

    var Element = ((window.event)?(event.srcElement):(evt.currentTarget));
    //To Do -->

}

HTML:

<input type="text" id="txt_Name" onkeydown="toDoOnKeyDown(event);"/>

As you notice when we called the function inside the html we have added a parameter event just in case the browser is Firefox.

I have read in an article that the event object in IE is called window.event and in Firefox we have to put it as a parameter.

In case you need it to be attached in the code:

document.getElementById('txt_Name').onkeydown = function(evt) {
    var myEvent = ((window.event)?(window.event):(evt));


    // get the Element which this event is all about 

    var Element = ((window.event)?(event.srcElement):(evt.currentTarget));
    // To Do -->
};

Answer 2

Try quick fix as follows:

Include in code:

let target = event.target || event.srcElement;

and change

event.srcElement.XXXXX to target.XXXXX

this solves the issue with Firefox.

Answer 3

srcElement is proprietary property originally coming from IE. The standardized property is target:

var target = event.target || event.srcElement;

if(target.onclick == null) { // shorter than getAttribute('onclick')
    //...
    document.mainForm.submit();
}

Also have a look at quirksmode.org - Event properties for more cross browser information.

---

Regarding the question what it is doing:

event.target / event.srcElement contains a reference to the element the event was raised on. getAttribute('onclick') == null checks whether a click event handler is assigned to element via inline event handling.

Is it important? We cannot say because we don't know what the ...code.. is doing.