April 2, 2000 - Handling Keyboard Strokes | WebReference

April 2, 2000 - Handling Keyboard Strokes

Yehuda Shiran April 2, 2000
Handling Keyboard Strokes
Tips: April 2000

Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D.
Doc JavaScript

When you want to handle keyboard strokes, first find out their relevant ascii values. In our Snakes games, we wanted to allow the user to use both the keyboard's keys k and K, and the numeric pad's 6 key. Here are the ASCII values:

var asciiU = 85;
var asciiu = 117;
var ascii6 = 54;

This is how you check inside the handleEvent() function: 

if (window.event.keyCode == asciiU || 
    window.event.keyCode == asciiu || 
    window.event.keyCode == ascii8)

Learn more about the Snakes game in Column 47, A DOM-Based Snakes Game, Part II .