Question

I know that E is short for ‘event,’ but it’s still not clear to me why I need to use it? I tried passing other letters through the function and it didn’t seem to work. Are there other situations where I need to pass a specific letter into a function?

$("#myThing").click(function (e) {
   var hit = $(e.target);
   hit.css('color','blue');
});

This does the same thing:

$("#myThing").click(function () {
   $(this).css('color','blue');
});

When should I use $(this) versus ‘e’?

Thank you!

Answer 1

You don’t need to pass a specific letter through the function.

$("#myThing").click(function (e) {
   var hit = $(e.target);
   hit.css('color','blue');
});

is identical to

$("#myThing").click(function (foo) {
   var hit = $(foo.target);
   hit.css('color','blue');
});

etc.

The difference between using $(e.target) and $(this) can be quite more significant though, since this will always be the element on which the event is tied, while e.target will be the specific element that was clicked, even though it’s located inside the this element

Hope that made sense