Question

I need to be able to go to the next line after hitting the ‘Enter’ (keycode == 13) after entering some text. This works if you hit ‘Enter’ before you enter any text but not after. Here’s some of my script

var keyPressedOnContactUsMessageHandler = function (e) {
    if (e.which == 13 || e.keyCode == 13) {
        $(this).append(" \n\n");
        if ($("#ContactUsMessage").focus()) {
            return false;
        } else {
            return true;
        }
        sendMessage();
        blockEnterKeyHandler(e);
    }
};

Answer 1

I think the problem is probably that you have a textarea and are attempting to add content to it with append. The HTML content of a textarea element is only relevant when the page is parsed. After that, the text contained is referred to by the value property. You should modify this instead.

this.value += '\n\n';

My guess is that your browser is being generous: if you modify the HTML before the value is altered, it modifies the value accordingly. It’s better just to modify the value yourself.

---

Also, $("#ContactUsMessage").focus() will always return a truthy value. If you are trying to test whether the element is focused, use is:

if ($('#ContactUsMessage').is(':focus')) {

NB that this does not work in older browsers if you are using a version of jQuery before 1.6.