Intercepting all key presses with jQuery before they are processed

Question

I have a web page and I need to intercept all keypresses before they get dispatched to whatever element in the dom has the focus. When the user types something like ~

Answer 1

You will probably have better luck with keydown it should fire before the event

also do this

$(document).keydown(function(e) {
    e.preventDefault();
});

calling preventDefault will stop normal process of the key press. Actually, you may be able to stay with keypress and just use the preventDefault to finish your interception needs.