Summary
The abilities we've discussed in this chapter allow us to react to various user-driven and browser-initiated events. We have learned how to safely perform actions when the page loads, how to handle mouse events such as clicking on links or hovering over buttons, and how to interpret keystrokes.
In addition, we have delved into some of the inner workings of the event system, and can use this knowledge to perform event delegation and to change the default behavior of an event. We can even simulate the effects of an event as if the user initiated it.
We can use these capabilities to build quite interactive pages. In the next chapter, we'll learn how to provide visual feedback to the user during these interactions.
Further reading
The topic of event handling will be explored in more detail in Chapter 10, Advanced Events. A complete list of jQuery's event methods is available in Appendix C, Quick Reference, of this book, or in the official jQuery documentation at http://api.jquery.com/.