Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual

Events for 4.0 Browsers

Unfortunately, JavaScript works differently not only in different browsers, but in different versions of browsers. Older versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer don’t recognize the same range of events as newer versions. Moreover, the latest versions of Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer differ significantly when it comes to JavaScript (the events available in Netscape Navigator 6 are far fewer than those in Internet Explorer 6). These incompatibilities can make a chore out of developing interactive Web pages that work for the largest possible audience.

If you hope to build successful interactive Web sites, you can’t get around having to learn which tag/event combinations work in which browsers. Over 95 percent of Web surfers today, however, use versions 4 or greater of Netscape Navigator or Internet Explorer, so this book concentrates on behaviors that work with those browsers. Refer to the following pages, which list and explain the most common and useful HTML tags and events that work in these browsers, whenever you apply a behavior. (Remember: The choice of events for a given tag depends on which option you’ve selected in the Show Event For pop-up menu [see Figure 11-2].)

Each entry shows you the name of the event as you’ll see it listed in the Behaviors panel, a plain-English description of what that event really means, and the list of tags to which this event can be applied. See Figure 11-4 for the visual representations of those ...