onbeforeactivate event

Article
01/24/2012

[This documentation is preliminary and is subject to change.]

Fires immediately before the object is set as the active element.

Syntax

HTML Attribute	<element onbeforeactivate = "handler(event)">
Event Property	object.onbeforeactivate = handler;
attachEvent Method	object.attachEvent("onbeforeactivate", handler)

Standards information

There are no standards that apply here.

Event information

Synchronous	No
Bubbles	No
Cancelable	No

Event handler parameters

pEvtObj [in]
Type: IHTMLEventObj

Remarks

Each document may have up to one active element. Set the active element with the setActive or focus methods. Using the setActive method has no effect on document focus. Using the focus method on an individual element causes the element to gain focus and become the active element.

Using the focus method on a document that does not have the focus moves the document to the front of the display. Additionally, the document's active element gains focus.

For a given display, only one element has focus at any given time. Striking a key directly affects only the element with focus. Events fired by that keystroke may be scripted to affect other documents and child elements.

With Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 and later, focus on a document, and the active element of a document can be managed separately. With Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 and later, use the onbeforeactivate event to cancel setting an element as active. Canceling an element's onbeforeactivate event has three different behaviors, depending on the action which fired the event.

When fired by a user clicking on the element, canceling will force the focus on the parent element and bubble up the chain until it hits a focusable element.
When fired by a user tabbing through the document, canceling will force the focus on the next element in the taborder. Shift-tab will force the focus on the previous element in the taborder.
When fired programmatically by the focus or the document.setActive methods, canceling will have no effect.

Note The onbeforeactivate event cannot be canceled when fired programmatically.

Change activation from the event.fromElement to the event.srcElement.

To invoke this event, do one of the following:

Click an element, other than the active element of the document.
Use the keyboard to move focus from the active element to another element.
Invoke the setActive method on an element, when the element is not the active element.
Invoke the focus method on an element, when the element is not the active element.

The pEvtObj parameter is required for the following interfaces: