JavaScript window resize event

Question

How can I hook into a browser window resize event?

There\'s a jQuery way of listening for resize events but I would prefer not to bring it into my project for just t

Answer 1

The already mentioned solutions above will work if all you want to do is resize the window and window only. However, if you want to have the resize propagated to child elements, you will need to propagate the event yourself. Here's some example code to do it:

window.addEventListener("resize", function () {
  var recResizeElement = function (root) {
    Array.prototype.forEach.call(root.childNodes, function (el) {

      var resizeEvent = document.createEvent("HTMLEvents");
      resizeEvent.initEvent("resize", false, true);
      var propagate = el.dispatchEvent(resizeEvent);

      if (propagate)
        recResizeElement(el);
    });
  };
  recResizeElement(document.body);
});

Note that a child element can call

 event.preventDefault();

on the event object that is passed in as the first Arg of the resize event. For example:

var child1 = document.getElementById("child1");
child1.addEventListener("resize", function (event) {
  ...
  event.preventDefault();
});