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From: Jayesh Modha on 17 Feb 2010 20:07
Hi,

I need to give a warning message when the user is trying to refresh
(either by F5 / CTRL + F5 or by reload from the context menu) the
window. If the user is closing the window, it is fine, no need to give
any warning.

For this purpose I am using OnBeforeUnload event but OnBeforeUnload
also gets fired on closing the window. I can detect if the window is
getting closed but it works only for IE not for Firefox or any other
browser. I found out that those properties are specific to IE DOM
properties not W3C DOM properties.

However, I am still interested to figuring this out this for Firefox.
The clientY is defined during other events (OnMouseDown, etc) but is
undefined within the OnBeforeUnload event which is the reason my code
isn't working. Does anyone know any another way to capture this?

I even tried OnMouseDown even to see if I can capture the mouse
location when the user is clicking on X Close button, but the attempt
wasn’t successful.

I am open to any other ideas/suggestions you may have which works for
all browsers.

Here's my code
-------------------------------------------------------------------
var tryingToReload = false;
window.onbeforeunload = function(e) //on before unload
{
if (!e) //Firefox and Safari gets argument directly.
{
e = window.event; // this is for IE
}

if (e.clientY != undefined && e.clientY < 0) // clicked on the close
button for IE
{
tryingToReload = false;
}

if (e.clientY != undefined && (e.clientY > 100 && e.clientY < 140)) //
select close from context menu from the right click on title bar on IE
{
tryingToReload = false;
}

if (tryingToReload) //user hasn't clicked on X close button or hasn't
selected close from context menu
{
tryingToReload = false;
return "warning message goes here";
}
}

document.onkeydown = function(e) //attach to key down event to detect
the F5 key
{
tryingToReload = false;

if (!e) //Firefox and Safari gets argument directly.
{
e = window.event;
}

var key = e.keyCode ? e.keyCode : e.which;

try //try
{
if (key == 116) //F5 Key detected
{
tryingToReload = true;
}
}
catch (ex) { }
}

document.oncontextmenu = function(e) //check for the right click
{
//cannot blindly say tryingToReload = true as the context menu doesn't
have refresh/reload options on all the elments.
//reload options doesn't appear on image, anchor tag, it does appear
on body, td and div tag in this case

var srcElement = getEventSrc(e);

var tagName = '';
if (srcElement.tagName != undefined) //Get the name of the tag
{
tagName = srcElement.tagName;
}

switch (tagName)
{
case "BODY":
case "TD":
case "DIV":
{
tryingToReload = true;
break;
}
default:
break;
}
}

function getEventSrc(e)
{
if (this.Event)
{
var targ = e.target;
//nodeType of 1 means ELEMENT_NODE
return targ.nodeType == 1 ? targ : targ.parentNode;
}
else //this is for IE
return event.srcElement;
}

document.onclick = function(e) //clicked anywhere else, you are not
trying to reload
{
tryingToReload = false;
}
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Really appreciated you looking into my post. Thanks for your time.

Thanks,
Jayesh Modha
From: Scott Sauyet on 18 Feb 2010 09:38
On Feb 17, 8:07 pm, Jayesh Modha <jayesh.mo...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I need to give a warning message when the user is trying to refresh
> (either by F5 / CTRL + F5 or by reload from the context menu) the
> window. If the user is closing the window, it is fine, no need to give
> any warning.

I was hoping someone with more specific knowledge would respond.

My guess -- and it is only a guess -- is that there will be no way in
general to determine if the page is unloaded for a refresh or for a
browser window close. It just doesn't seem like a thing that the
browser makers would feel a need to expose, and might in fact reveal
more of the user's behavior than wanted.

I'd be interested to be proven wrong, but that's my guess.

Good luck,

-- Scott
From: Jayesh Modha on 18 Feb 2010 12:00
Scott,

Thanks a lot for your response. Really appreciate you looking into
this.
I am also thinking the same that browser would not expose a direct way
to tell difference between window refresh and window close.
However, if you look at my code above, we can specifically tell
difference between F5/CTRL+F5 refresh and window close. It also works
across all the browsers.

There is only one condition which is not working for me with my above
code.

If you right click on the window, then after you don't select refresh/
reload option and instead you close the window or you right click on
the title bar and close window from the context menu.
My above code doesn't work in that condition as I am not able to
detect the location of the click anyhow. It works just fine with IE as
it is giving you location of click and all other browser gives
undefined value for clientY property.

Hopefully I would get a solution.

On Feb 18, 6:38 am, Scott Sauyet <scott.sau...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 17, 8:07 pm, Jayesh Modha <jayesh.mo...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I need to give a warning message when the user is trying to refresh
> > (either by F5 / CTRL + F5 or by reload from the context menu) the
> > window. If the user is closing the window, it is fine, no need to give
> > any warning.
>
> I was hoping someone with more specific knowledge would respond.
>
> My guess -- and it is only a guess -- is that there will be no way in
> general to determine if the page is unloaded for a refresh or for a
> browser window close.  It just doesn't seem like a thing that the
> browser makers would feel a need to expose, and might in fact reveal
> more of the user's behavior than wanted.
>
> I'd be interested to be proven wrong, but that's my guess.
>
> Good luck,
>
>   -- Scott

From: Scott Sauyet on 18 Feb 2010 12:31
On Feb 18, 12:00 pm, Jayesh Modha <jayesh.mo...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> I am also thinking the same that browser would not expose a direct way
> to tell difference between window refresh and window close.
> However, if you look at my code above, we can specifically tell
> difference between F5/CTRL+F5 refresh and window close. It also works
> across all the browsers.

Capturing F5/CTRL+F5 seems reasonable. But there are a number of
other ways to refresh/reload the page. I tried your code in IE8 and
FF3.6 and catch only the F5/CTRL+F5 events. It doesn't capture the
refresh with the browsers' refresh/reload buttons. It doesn't capture
the context menu reload. It doesn't capture FF's View > Reload. It
doesn't capture CTRL-R in FF.

Do you have a publicly available page where it's working for you?

-- Scott
From: Jayesh Modha on 18 Feb 2010 12:42
Unfortunately, I don't have a public page.

I totally forgot CTRL + R, wow, thanks a lot for that. I will include
that into my code.
Hopefully, I haven't forgot any of my code here but I will zip up my
code and send to you if you'd prefer that.

On Feb 18, 9:31 am, Scott Sauyet <scott.sau...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> On Feb 18, 12:00 pm, Jayesh Modha <jayesh.mo...(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I am also thinking the same that browser would not expose a direct way
> > to tell difference between window refresh and window close.
> > However, if you look at my code above, we can specifically tell
> > difference between F5/CTRL+F5 refresh and window close. It also works
> > across all the browsers.
>
> Capturing F5/CTRL+F5 seems reasonable.  But there are a number of
> other ways to refresh/reload the page.  I tried your code in IE8 and
> FF3.6 and catch only the F5/CTRL+F5 events.  It doesn't capture the
> refresh with the browsers' refresh/reload buttons.  It doesn't capture
> the context menu reload.  It doesn't capture FF's View > Reload.  It
> doesn't capture CTRL-R in FF.
>
> Do you have a publicly available page where it's working for you?
>
>   -- Scott

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