Keyboard button clicks with Space and Enter behave differently
Written by Stefan Judis
- Published at
- Updated at
- Reading time
- 1min
This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.
Whenever you add a JavaScript click handler to DOM elements other than the good old button
, you should hold on and ask yourself if you're using the correct element. Semantic HTML provides additional functionality to assistive technology and is usually more accessible than clickable div soup.
For example, buttons come with keyboard accessibility features built-in. They're focusable and can be clicked by pressing Enter
or Space
.
But did you know that the two keys click buttons differently?
Enter
clicks a focused button onkeydown
Space
clicks a focused button onkeyup
I found this little fun fact on Adrian's blog. Check out the post to learn more and see this click behavior in action.
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Yes? Cool! You might want to check out Web Weekly for more quick learnings. The last edition went out 18 days ago.