Related links

Danny Goodman on key events

DOM3 events draft

Notes

keydown, keypress, keyup are events detected by the browser.

event.keyCode, event.charCode are variables to which values can be assigned when the above events are detected. Note that different user agents assign values to these differently, for example, IE and Opera do not use charCode.

modifiers indicates whether the shift, ctrl and/or alt keys were depressed during the keydown event. The information comes from the event.shiftKey, event.ctrlKey and event.altKey variables.