Element: click event
An element receives a click
event when a pointing device button (such as a mouse's primary mouse button) is both pressed and released while the pointer is located inside the element.
Bubbles | Yes |
---|---|
Cancelable | Yes |
Interface | MouseEvent |
Event handler property | onclick |
If the button is pressed on one element and the pointer is moved outside the element before the button is released, the event is fired on the most specific ancestor element that contained both elements.
click
fires after both the mousedown
and mouseup
events have fired, in that order.
Usage notes
The MouseEvent
object passed into the event handler for click
has its detail
property set to the number of times the target
was clicked. In other words, detail
will be 2 for a double-click, 3 for triple-click, and so forth. This counter resets after a short interval without any clicks occurring; the specifics of how long that interval is may vary from browser to browser and across platforms. The interval is also likely to be affected by user preferences; for example, accessibility options may extend this interval to make it easier to perform multiple clicks with adaptive interfaces.
Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer 8 & 9 suffer from a bug where elements with a computed background-color
of transparent
that are overlaid on top of other element(s) won't receive click
events. Any click
events will be fired at the underlying element(s) instead. See this live example for a demonstration.
Known workarounds for this bug:
- For IE9 only:
- Set
background-color
: rgba(0,0,0,0)
- Set
opacity
: 0
and an explicitbackground-color
other thantransparent
- Set
- For IE8 and IE9: Set
filter: alpha(opacity=0);
and an explicitbackground-color
other thantransparent
Safari Mobile
Safari Mobile 7.0+ (and likely earlier versions too) suffers from a bug where click
events aren't fired on elements that aren't typically interactive (e.g. <div>
) and which also don't have event listeners directly attached to the elements themselves (i.e. event delegation is being used). See this live example for a demonstration. See also Safari's docs on making elements clickable and the definition of "clickable element".
Known workarounds for this bug:
- Set
cursor
: pointer;
on the element or any of its ancestors. - Add a dummy
onclick="void(0)"
attribute to the element or any of its ancestors up to but not including<body>
. - Use a typically interactive element (e.g.,
<a>
) instead of one that isn't typically interactive (e.g.,<div>
). - Stop using
click
event delegation.
Safari Mobile considers the following elements to be typically interactive (and thus they aren't affected by this bug):
Examples
This example displays the number of consecutive clicks on a <button>
.
HTML
<button>Click</button>
JavaScript
const button = document.querySelector('button');
button.addEventListener('click', event => {
button.textContent = `Click count: ${event.detail}`;
});
Result
Try making rapid, repeated clicks on the button to increase the click count. If you take a break between clicks, the count will reset.
Specifications
Specification |
---|
UI Events # event-type-click |
Browser compatibility
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