Detecting if ctrl is pressed when clicking a button?

[Guest]

Hi

What's the best way to detect if ctrl is being held down while a button on screen is being clicked?

Cheers

[Ned Murphy]

One way would be to use a variable that reflects the status of the control key and use that in conjunction with whatever button event handler coding you have.  Here is how you can manage that control key indication...

stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, detectKey);
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, detectKey);

var ctrlDown:Boolean = false;

function detectKey(event:KeyboardEvent):void { 
     ctrlDown = event.ctrlKey;
}

[Aaron Beall · Accepted solution]

MouseEvent has several handy properties to tell you if a modifier key is currently held down:

function clickHandler(e:MouseEvent){

     trace(e.ctrlKey); // Also works with Command on Mac

     trace(e.controlKey); // Windows and Mac "control" key has different meaning

     trace(e.commandKey); // Mac only

     trace(e.shiftKey);

     trace(e.altKey);

}

More here:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/events/MouseEvent.html

Cheers.

-Aaron

[Ned Murphy]

That is a learned-something-new-today answer Aaron...   thanks.  I was wondering how to get the mouse handler to determine the key status so I figured I need to remember that separately.

[Guest]

Thank you both. Those mouse events eg e.ctrlKey are bloody brilliant!!!