How Google detects input in search box to display instant results?

Question

How is Google detecting user input? I looked around and the text field does not have the onkeyup or onchange events.

Is there any other way to detect user input in a text field?

Answer 1

it does have keyup and keydown listeners, but they are assigned at runtime, via addEventListener("keyup", ...). Use your browser's DOM inspector to select the input element, and then drill into the event listeners currently assigned (in webkit's inspector, that's under "Event Listeners" at the bottom of the right-hand pane) -- you'll see keyup, keydown, and several others.

Answer 2

It does have event listeners. Using the inspect element on chrome you can clearly see the listeners - highlighted in the screen shot below.