Question

I’m looking for some code that would validate whether or not the key pressed is a key that changes the value of the textarea.

It should be cross browser, (Mac and Windows), and not fire when keys like Command, alt/option, control, fn, volume, etc. I’m hoping there is a good plugin for this, or someone would be willing to put the time in making a quick function or whatever for this.

Answer 1

I don’t know about a plugin but you can use jQuery’s .keypress() and then include/exclude certain keys.

http://api.jquery.com/keypress/

Something like this perhaps:

$("#elem").keypress(function(event) {
    if ( event.which >= 65 && event.which <= 90 ) {
        // Do something with A - Z characters...
    }
}

---

In response to you multi-key comment…

There are additional properties on the event object that you can use:

if(event.which == 65 && event.ctrlKey)...

event.ctrlKey    
event.shiftKey
event.metaKey
event.altKey