Intercept page exit event

Question

Similar to Ghommey's answer, but this also supports old versions of IE and Firefox.

window.onbeforeunload = function (e) {
  var message = "Your confirmation message goes here.",
  e = e || window.event;
  // For IE and Firefox
  if (e) {
    e.returnValue = message;
  }

  // For Safari
  return message;
};

See this article. The feature you are looking for is the onbeforeunload

sample code:

  <script language="JavaScript">
  window.onbeforeunload = confirmExit;
  function confirmExit()
  {
    return "You have attempted to leave this page.  If you have made any changes to the fields without clicking the Save button, your changes will be lost.  Are you sure you want to exit this page?";
  }
</script>

Instead of an annoying confirmation popup, it would be nice to delay leaving just a bit (matter of milliseconds) to manage successfully posting the unsaved data to the server, which I managed for my site using writing dummy text to the console like this:

window.onbeforeunload=function(e){
  // only take action (iterate) if my SCHEDULED_REQUEST object contains data        
  for (var key in SCHEDULED_REQUEST){   
    postRequest(SCHEDULED_REQUEST); // post and empty SCHEDULED_REQUEST object
    for (var i=0;i<1000;i++){
      // do something unnoticable but time consuming like writing a lot to console
      console.log('buying some time to finish saving data'); 
    };
    break;
  };
}; // no return string --> user will leave as normal but data is send to server

Edit: See also Synchronous_AJAX and how to do that with jquery