Javascript - detection if the mouse button is down when the mouse enters the active area (the mouse was pressed outside this area)

Question

I am new to javascript, so I might miss something obvious here, but this is a problem. I don't get a mouse up event if the event occurred outside the active area under the javascript control, so if the mouse enters the active area (onmouseover event) with the left button down, is there any way to find out what the button is down?

Added information: Ideally, I would like to track the mouse even outside the browser window - as Google maps do - try clicking the mouse button and go beyond the browser - this works in chrome and with some quirks in Fire Fox. Is it possible to do this by staying within JavaScript, or are these some proprietary things?

Answer 1

Yes: make sure that the mouse event handlers for detecting the mouse-down event are bound to some element that occupies the entire viewport. For example, an HTML element (document) ...