Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn about the basic mouse events and their properties in JavaScript.

Introduction to JavaScript mouse events

Mouse events fire when you use the mouse to interact with the elements on the page. DOM Level 3 events define nine mouse events.

mousedown, mouseup, and click

When you click an element, there are no less than three mouse events fire in the following sequence:

1. The mousedown fires when you depress the mouse button on the element.
2. The mouseup fires when you release the mouse button on the element.
3. The click fires when one mousedown and one mouseup detected on the element.

If you depress the mouse button on an element and move your mouse off the element, and then release the mouse button. The only mousedown event fires on the element.

Likewise, if you depress the mouse button, move the mouse over the element, and release the mouse button, the only mouseup event fires on the element.

In both cases, the click event never fires.

dblclick

In practice, you rarely use the dblclick event. The dblclick event fires when you double click over an element.

It takes two click events to cause a dblclick event to fire. The dblclick event has four events fired in the following order:

1.  mousedown
2.  mouseup
3.  click
4.  mousedown
5.  mouseup
6.  click
7.  dblclick

As you can see, the click events always take place before the dblclick event. If you register both click and dblclick event handlers on the same element, you will not know exactly what user actually has clicked or double-clicked the element.

 mousemove

The mousemove event fires repeatedly when you move the mouse cursor around an element. Even when you move the mouse one pixel, the mousemove event still fires. It will cause the page slow, therefore, you only register mousemove event handler only when you need it and immediately remove the event handler as soon as it is no longer used, like this:

Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

mouseover / mouseout

The mouseover fires when the mouse cursor is outside of the element and then move to inside the boundaries of the element.

The mouseout fires when the mouse cursor is over an element and then moves another element.

mouseenter / mouseleave

The mouseenter fires when the mouse cursor is outside of an element and then moves to inside the boundaries of the element.

The mouseleave fires when the mouse cursor is over an element and then moves to the outside of the element’s boundaries.

Both mouseenter and mouseleave does not bubble and does not fire when the mouse cursor moves over descendant elements.

Registering mouse event handlers

To register a mouse event, you use these steps:

• First, select the element by using querySelector() or getElementById() method.
• Then, register the mouse event using the addEventListener() method.

For example, suppose that you have the following button:

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

To register a mouse click event handler, you use the following code:

Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

or you can assign a mouse event handler to the element’s property:

Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

In legacy systems, you may find that the event handler is assigned in the HTML attribute of the element:

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

It’s a good practice to always use the addEventListener() to register a mouse event handler.

Detecting mouse buttons

The event object passed to the mouse event handler has a property called button that indicates which mouse button was pressed on the mouse to trigger the event.

The mouse button is represented by a number:

• 0: the main mouse button is pressed, usually the left button.
• 1: the auxiliary button is pressed, usually the middle button or the wheel button.
• 2: the secondary button is pressed, usually the right button.
• 3: the fourth button is pressed, usually the Browser Back button.
• 4: the fifth button is pressed, usually the Browser Forward button.

See the following example:

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

In this example, when you click the button with your mouse (left-click, right-click, and middle-click), it shows a corresponding message on the <div> element.

Modifier keys

When you click an element, you may press one or more modifier keys: Shift, Ctrl, Alt, and Meta.

Note the Meta key is the Windows key on Windows keyboards and the Command key on the Apple keyboard.

To detect if these modifier keys have been pressed, you can use the event object passed to the mouse event handler.

The event object has four Boolean properties, where each is set to true if the key is being held down or false if the key is not pressed.

See the following example:

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Getting Screen Coordinates

The screenX and screenY properties of the event passed to the mouse event handler return the screen coordinates of the location of the mouse in relation to the entire screen.

On the other hand, the clientX and clientY properties provide the horizontal and vertical coordinates within the application’s client area at which the mouse event occurred:

See the following demo:

Code language: HTML, XML (xml)

Summary

• DOM Level 3 defines nine mouse events.
• Use addEventListener() method to register a mouse event handler.
• The event.button indicates which mouse button was pressed to trigger the mouse event.
• The modifier keys: alt, shift, ctrl, and meta (Mac) can be obtained via properties of the event object passed to the mouse event handler.
• The screenX and screenY properties return the horizontal and vertical coordinates of the mouse pointer in screen coordinates.
• The clientX and clientY properties of the event object return horizontal and vertical coordinates within the application’s client area at which the mouse event occurred.