mousedown | onmousedown event

Fires when the user clicks the object with either mouse button.

Syntax

HTML Attribute	<element onmousedown = "handler(event)">
Event Property	object.onmousedown = handler;
attachEvent Method	object.attachEvent("onmousedown", handler)
addEventListener Method	object.addEventListener("mousedown", handler, useCapture)

Event information

Synchronous	No
Bubbles	Yes
Cancelable	Yes

Event handler parameters

pEvtObj [in]: Type: IHTMLEventObj

Standards information

HTML 4.01 Specification, Section 18.2.3

Remarks

Use the button property to determine which mouse button is clicked.

Initiates actions associated with the event and with the object being clicked.

To invoke this event, do one of the following:

Click a mouse button.

Examples

This example shows how to determine the origin of the onmousedown event when event bubbling is used.

Code example: http://samples.msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/samples/author/dhtml/refs/onmousedownEX.htm

JavaScript


<body onmousedown="(event.target)?alert(event.target.tagName):alert(event.srcElement.tagName);">
<table border=1>
  <th>Click the items below with your mouse.</th>
  <tr><td><button>Click Me</button></td></tr>
  <tr><td><input type="text" value="Click Me"></td></tr>
  <tr><td><span>Click Me</span></td></tr>
</table>
<p>This code retrieves the tagName of the object on which
   the onmousedown event has fired.</p>
</body>