.event.srcElement in IE & FF making it work

JavaScript
1

if(window.event){
var current = window.event.srcElement;
}else{
var current = event.target;
}

and then i am using current in the code
but i am not getting the value in either FF or IE

2

The standard way is for the function to accept the event as the first parameter. Internet Explorer doesn’t use that first parameter, but most other web browsers do use the first parameter to pass the event.


function clickHandler(evt) {
    ...
}
document.getElementById('...').onclick = clickHandler;

The event can be passed as the evt variable, or with IE it will be from the window.event object, so we now bring those together:


function clickHandler(evt) {
    evt = evt || window.event;
    ...
}

Most other web browser refer to the element that was clicked in the target property of the event. IE uses the property called srcElement instead. So we’ll use a similar technique as was used before. If the target property exists we’ll use that, and if it doesn’t we’ll use srcElement instead.


function clickHandler(evt) {
    evt = evt || window.event;
    var targ = evt.target || evt.srcElement;
    ...
}

The Opera web browser has an issue where clicking on test results in the text being the target, when it should be the element that contains the text instead, so we need to check if that’s the case. The nodeType property will tell us what’s going on there. If it’s equal to node.TEXT_NODE we know there’s a problem that needs to be fixed. It should be equal to node.ELEMENT_NODE instead.

There’s another problem though, because IE doesn’t provide support for the node object, so we’ll use the numeric representations of them instead (found at the Node.nodeType page.


function clickHandler(evt) {
    evt = evt || window.event;
    var targ = evt.target || evt.srcElement;
    if (targ.nodeType === 3) { fix Opera text node issue
        targ = targ.parentNode;
    }
    ...
}

Now you can go on with the target element, perhaps by confirming that it is an element node (value of 1), and that it’s an anchor element (string of ‘A’).
Perhaps even by returning false to prevent the web browser from performing its default behaviour on that element.


function clickHandler(evt) {
    evt = evt || window.event;
    var targ = evt.target || evt.srcElement;
    if (targ.nodeType === 3) { fix Opera text node issue
        targ = targ.parentNode;
    }
    if (targ.nodeType === 1 && targ.nodeName === 'A') {
        ...
    }
    return false;
}

That is the correct and proper way to get the target element and make good use of it.