mousewheel,wheel and DOMMouseScroll in JavaScript

Question

DOMMouseScroll only works for Firefox.

wheel seems to work for both Firefox and chrome. What is this? Haven't found docs on this one.

mousewheel doesn't work for Firefox.

How should I use them, in order to gain best browser-compatibility.

Example given:

document.addEventListener('ScrollEvent', function(e){
   DoSomething();
});

Answer 1

I would suggest that all three of them be used at the same time to cover all browsers.

Notes:

1. In versions of Firefox where both the wheel and DOMMouseScroll events are supported, we need a way to instruct the browser to execute only wheel and not both. Something like the following:if ("onwheel" in window) ...
   

2. The above check though, in the case of IE9 and IE10 will fail, because even though these browsers support the wheel event, they don't have the onwheel attribute in DOM elements. To counter that we can use a flag as shown later on.

3. I believe the number returned by e.deltaY, e.wheelDelta and e.detail is not useful other than helping us determine the direction of the scroll, so in the solution below -1 and 1 will be returned.

Snippet:

/* The flag that determines whether the wheel event is supported. */
var supportsWheel = false;

/* The function that will run when the events are triggered. */
function DoSomething (e) {
  /* Check whether the wheel event is supported. */
  if (e.type == "wheel") supportsWheel = true;
  else if (supportsWheel) return;

  /* Determine the direction of the scroll (< 0 → up, > 0 → down). */
  var delta = ((e.deltaY || -e.wheelDelta || e.detail) >> 10) || 1;

  /* ... */
  console.log(delta);
}

/* Add the event listeners for each event. */
document.addEventListener('wheel', DoSomething);
document.addEventListener('mousewheel', DoSomething);
document.addEventListener('DOMMouseScroll', DoSomething);

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Although almost 3 years have passed since the posting of the question, I believe people who stumble upon it in the future will benefit from this answer, so feel free to suggest/make improvements to it. 😊