“onchange” event delayed in IE? (ok with Firefox)

Question

It might be a beginner question but I can\'t understand why the onchange event is never called by IE while it works Ok with firefox.

Answer 1

While annoying, it is not a bug that onchange is not fired until the element loses focus. (I get around the issue by having multiple bindings for different events; make sure not to clobber a handler and use an update aggregation if appropriate.)

Here is the "official" W3C documentation on the subject:

The onchange event occurs when a control loses the input focus and its value has been modified since gaining focus. This attribute applies to the following elements: INPUT, SELECT, and TEXTAREA.

Here is the MSDN reference:

This event is fired when the contents are committed and not while the value is changing. For example, on a text box, this event is not fired while the user is typing, but rather [it is fired] when the user commits the change by leaving the text box that has focus.

The behavior, while often annoying, is as specified.