Question

What is the best way to restrict “number”-only input for textboxes?

I am looking for something that allows decimal points.

I see a lot of examples. But have yet to decide which one to use.

Update from Praveen Jeganathan

No more plugins, jQuery has implemented its own jQuery.isNumeric() added in v1.7.
See: https://stackoverflow.com/a/20186188/66767

Answer 1

Update

There is a new and very simple solution for this:

It allows you to use any kind of input filter on a text <input>,
including various numeric filters. This will correctly handle
Copy+Paste, Drag+Drop, keyboard shortcuts, context menu operations,
non-typeable keys, and all keyboard layouts.

See this answer or try it yourself on JSFiddle.

jquery.numeric plugin

I’ve successfully implemented many forms with the jquery.numeric plugin.

$(document).ready(function(){
    $(".numeric").numeric();
});

Moreover this works with textareas also!

However, note that Ctrl+A, Copy+Paste (via context menu) and Drag+Drop will not work as expected.

HTML 5

With wider support for the HTML 5 standard, we can use pattern attribute and number type for input elements to restrict number only input. In some browsers (notably Google Chrome), it works to restrict pasting non-numeric content as well. More information about number and other newer input types is available here.