Question

If I have some HTML like this:

<a onmouseover='SetTopLeft(this);'href='#'>Click me!</a>

Can I get both the object AND the event in the function? So, for example, can I have a method signature like this?

function SetTopLeft(e, o)

…where e is the event and o is ‘this’? I may actually not need the object, but I think I probably DO need the event. I wouldn’t mind understanding a little better how this works in JavaScript – i.e., when/how can I pass an event and when/how can I pass the calling object? Can I choose which to pass? Can I pass both?

Basically, what I really need to do is get the mouse coordinates within the DIV within which the anchor is located (even if that DIV is only a portion of a web page and whether or not the browser is full-screen) and I’m having a terrible time getting it done. Most of the examples I have seen for getting these coordinates within some element use the event and the pageX and pageY properties of that event.

By the way, this must work in IE 6 onward. Firefox would be good, too. Others are not necessary.

Answer 1

Yes, in the inline code this refers to the HTML DOM object for the element, and event refers to the event object. So you could do the following:

HTML

<a onmouseover='SetTopLeft(event, this);' href='#'>Click me!</a>

JavaScript

function SetTopLeft(e, obj) {...}