But I’m not moving my mouse!
Date : 2008 04 03 Category : Tech & Development
AjaxianPPK has detailed another "when a browser vendor codes to IEs bugs... and they actually get around to fixing them" problem.
It appears that IE used to do something strange with onmousemove, and events would fire every X seconds even if you haven't moved the mouse:
When doing my new mousemove test I found a bug in IE5-7 that I was previously unaware of. When the user moves the mouse over the element, the mousemove event fires many times, as it should. However, when the user stops moving the mouse, IE5-7 continues firing the event every once in a while. This stops only when the mouse leaves the target element entirely.
This is obviously a bug: when the mouse does not move the mousemove event should not fire.
The IE team reacted correctly: the bug has been solved in IE8b1. When the mouse does not move any more the mousemove event stops firing, as it should.
However, this same bug was recently introduced in Safari (Windows) and Opera!
Safari 3.0 and Opera 9.26 support mousemove correctly, but Safari 3.1 and Opera 9.5b have copied the IE bug.