Catch only keypresses that change input?

Question

I want to do something when a keypress changes the input of a textbox. I figure the keypress event would be best for this, but how do I know if it caused a chan

Answer 1

I came up with this for autosaving a textarea. It uses a combination of the .keyUp() jQuery method to see if the content has changed. And then I update every 5 seconds because I don't want the form getting submitted every time it's changed!!!!

var savePost = false;

jQuery(document).ready(function() { 
    setInterval('autoSave()', 5000)
    $('input, textarea').keyup(function(){
        if (!savePost) {
            savePost = true;    
        }
    })
})


function autoSave() {
    if (savePost) {
        savePost = false;
        $('#post_submit, #task_submit').click();            
    }
}

I know it will fire even if the content hasn't changed but it was easier that hardcoding which keys I didn't want it to work for.