Question

I know that I can track when the mouse is moved like this:

$("body").mousemove( function(e){
    alert( "You moved to WIDTH " + e.pageX );
} );

Ok. I wanna be able to tell whether the mouse pointer was moved to left or to the right.

I know that to do this, I’ll have to know the previous mouse position and simply compare it to the current. But how can I do this?

Answer 1

var prevX = 0;
$(window).mousemove(function(e) {
    $("div").text(prevX >= e.pageX ? "left" : "right");
    prevX = e.pageX;
});​

DEMO: http://jsfiddle.net/tb86F/