I need to check if browser is navigating to another page or closing. My idea is;

1. Create global variable var isNavigating = false;
2. Bind click event to make isNavigating = true of every anchor which will navigate to another page
3. Check if isNavigating true on body's unload event.

Any other ideas? Remendations?

I need to check if browser is navigating to another page or closing. My idea is;

1. Create global variable var isNavigating = false;
2. Bind click event to make isNavigating = true of every anchor which will navigate to another page
3. Check if isNavigating true on body's unload event.

Any other ideas? Remendations?

• javascript

• 1 I think you might want to reword your question to make it clear you want to know whether they are navigating away or whether they are closing (i.e. to know which is happening, not just to know either is happening). As it's written just now, it's ambiguous as to whether you want to be able to tell the difference between them or not. – ADW Commented Jul 7, 2011 at 15:10
• if a user typing a new website in the address bar and hitting enter is navigation, there's no way to tell the difference between that and the user closing the tab. – Thomas Shields Commented Jul 7, 2011 at 15:43

1 Answer 1

You can do this by the following script.

<script type="text/javascript"> 
     window.onbeforeunload = function(){ return;} 
</script> 

However if you plan to cancel the navigaion, just don't bother. It's not possible as far as i know.

Code below checks if the user has clicked a link.

var checkAnchorClick = false;

$(document).ready(function () {
    $("a").live("click", function () {
        checkAnchorClick = true;
    });
});

$(window).unload(function () {
    if (checkAnchorClick)
        alert("User clicked a link...");
    else
        alert("Something else...");
});