To capture key events in Javascript (in other words, prevent higher elements, like the document itself, from receiving the events), just prepend your handler with a return statement, and then return false from the callback. For instance, if I want a textarea to absorb CTRL-S events so the browser doesn't try to save the webpage to file, I could do this:
<script type='text/javascript'>
function myKeyDownCallBack(event){
//This is the keycode for the letter s. This code doesn't work in all
// browsers, but there's a way to do it everywhere.
if(event.keyCode == 83 && event.ctrlKey){
//Process the ctrl-s event if desired
//Prevent others from getting the event
return false;
}
//If we didn't capture the event, let it continue to bubble up.
return true;
}
</script>
<textarea onkeydown="return myKeyDownCallBack(event);"/>
