jquery.keycombinator

jquery.keycombinator is a do-it-all plugin to let your users define keyboard shortcuts. Simply slap it onto an input box and it will detect any entered key combinations and provide detailed data in a callback function, with OS-specific key symbols. Try out the demo!

Installation

Download the plugin:

• .zip format
• .tar.gz format

and depending on your web framework, copy either the jquery.keycombinator.js or jquery.keycombinator.min.js file into your project.

Usage

First, include the plugin in pages you want to use it. For example in plain HTML:

<script src="path/to/jquery.keycombinator.min.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Basic

Attach jquery.keycombinator to your keycombo input boxes:

$('#myKeyComboInput').makeKeyCombinator({
  defaultCombos: {
    mac: ['⌃', 'F'],
    win: ['Ctrl', 'F'],
    unix: ['Ctrl', 'F']
  },
  onComplete: function(keyComboData){
    console.log(keyComboData);
  }
});

Clearing

Clear a keycombinator box upon clicking a button. :

Reset to Defaults

Reset a keycombinator to its default value

Options

Returned Data

stored in the variable:

• comboString (string): A user-friendly string for the key combo that's tailored to the current OS
• comboParts (array): Array of all the parts of the key combo. Each element is an object with the following:
  • keyChar (char): the actual key character
  • keyCode (integer): the keyCode of the pressed key (not included in defaultKeyCombinator() callbacks)
• ctrlKey (boolean): Indicates whether the key combo includes a ctrl key
• altKey (boolean): Indicates whether the key combo includes an alt key

Browser Support

jquery.keycombinator has been tested on new versions of Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and IE. It's not guaranteed to work in other browsers.

Known Issues

Apart from combinations already used by the OS and browser, these are key combinations that are known not to work (in any permutation):

• Mac
  • Firefox
    • ⌃⌥`
  • Chrome
    • ⌃⌥`
    • ⌃⌥←
    • ⌃⌥→

Credits

Huge kudos to the jwerty project, which this is sort of a reverse of, and which introduced me to the wonderful world of Mac modifier key symbols.