Element: mouseover event

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

The mouseover event is fired at an Element when a pointing device (such as a mouse or trackpad) is used to move the cursor onto the element or one of its child elements.

Syntax

Use the event name in methods like addEventListener(), or set an event handler property.

addEventListener("mouseover", (event) => {});

onmouseover = (event) => {};

Event type

A MouseEvent. Inherits from UIEvent and Event.

Event properties

This interface also inherits properties of its parents, UIEvent and Event.

MouseEvent.altKey Read only: Returns true if the alt key was down when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.button Read only: The button number that was pressed (if applicable) when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.buttons Read only: The buttons being pressed (if any) when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.clientX Read only: The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in viewport coordinates.
MouseEvent.clientY Read only: The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in viewport coordinates.
MouseEvent.ctrlKey Read only: Returns true if the control key was down when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.layerX Non-standard Read only: Returns the horizontal coordinate of the event relative to the current layer.
MouseEvent.layerY Non-standard Read only: Returns the vertical coordinate of the event relative to the current layer.
MouseEvent.metaKey Read only: Returns true if the meta key was down when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.movementX Read only: The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the last mousemove event.
MouseEvent.movementY Read only: The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the last mousemove event.
MouseEvent.offsetX Read only: The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the padding edge of the target node.
MouseEvent.offsetY Read only: The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the position of the padding edge of the target node.
MouseEvent.pageX Read only: The X coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the whole document.
MouseEvent.pageY Read only: The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer relative to the whole document.
MouseEvent.relatedTarget Read only: The secondary target for the event, if there is one.
MouseEvent.screenX Read only: The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in screen coordinates.
MouseEvent.screenY Read only: The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in screen coordinates.
MouseEvent.shiftKey Read only: Returns true if the shift key was down when the mouse event was fired.
MouseEvent.mozInputSource Non-standard Read only: The type of device that generated the event (one of the MOZ_SOURCE_* constants). This lets you, for example, determine whether a mouse event was generated by an actual mouse or by a touch event (which might affect the degree of accuracy with which you interpret the coordinates associated with the event).
MouseEvent.webkitForce Non-standard Read only: The amount of pressure applied when clicking.
MouseEvent.x Read only: Alias for MouseEvent.clientX.
MouseEvent.y Read only: Alias for MouseEvent.clientY.

Examples

The following example illustrates the difference between mouseover and mouseenter events.

HTML

html

<ul id="test">
  <li>item 1</li>
  <li>item 2</li>
  <li>item 3</li>
</ul>

JavaScript

const test = document.getElementById("test");

// This handler will be executed only once when the cursor
// moves over the unordered list
test.addEventListener(
  "mouseenter",
  (event) => {
    // highlight the mouseenter target
    event.target.style.color = "purple";

    // reset the color after a short delay
    setTimeout(() => {
      event.target.style.color = "";
    }, 500);
  },
  false,
);

// This handler will be executed every time the cursor
// is moved over a different list item
test.addEventListener(
  "mouseover",
  (event) => {
    // highlight the mouseover target
    event.target.style.color = "orange";

    // reset the color after a short delay
    setTimeout(() => {
      event.target.style.color = "";
    }, 500);
  },
  false,
);

Result

Specifications

Specification
UI Events # event-type-mouseover
HTML Standard # handler-onmouseover

Browser compatibility

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