the change event

[naktinis]

According to html 4.01 spec. input element's 'change' event is fired when "a control loses the input focus and its value has been modified since gaining focus." This could be helpful if user changes the value and switches focus thus indicating that the text-entering is done. However, the feature I wanted to propose or discuss would be an event which is fired when the input field actually changes, i.e. you don't have to blur the field. The proposed event would react to key presses, selecting from autocomplete lists etc. This would be helpful because:

• there are currently many ajax pages that could react to any change and represent some data in real time when value changes
• there is no way for browser to say that it has used its automatic form filling tools (when using opera wand, it even fills two input fields without informing the DOM; similar in firefox), because the focus hasn't changed and they don't want to violate html recommendations

[anne]

Web Forms 2.0 introduced the 'input' event which does exactly that. It's also implemented in Opera and Firefox (at least).

[naktinis]

Yes, 'input' event does solve a small part of the problem. However, I just check on opera and firefox3 - they fire the event when I enter something, but if i select an entry from autocomplete list or browser fills some forms for me - it is not fired.

This [input] event must be fired on a control whenever the value of the control changes due to input from the user, and is otherwise identical to the change event.

Here I can see the "input from the user". It makes me wonder why browsers interpreted it the way that selecting from an autocomplete list is not an input from the user...

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this action doesn't solve the automatic form filling question. The values of input fields change when browser fills them, so why shouldn't DOM be aware of that and take necessary actions?

So two questions arise:
1) How much is it practically different from 'keypressed' event?
2) What about autocomplete list and auto filling - which is not "input from the user", but field values actually do change.