mouseleave

The mouseleave event is fired when a pointing device (usually a mouse) is moved off the element that has the listener attached.

Similar to mouseout, it differs in that it doesn't bubble and that it isn't sent until the pointer has moved from its physical space and the one of all its descendants.

One mouseleave event is sent to each element of the hierarchy when leaving them. Here 4 events are sent to the four elements of the hierarchy when the pointer moves from the text to an area outside of the most outer div represented here.	One single mouseout event is sent to the deepest element of the DOM tree, then it bubbles up the hierarchy until it is canceled by a handler or reaches the root.

Combined with the behavior of its symmetrical event, mouseenter, the mouseleave DOM Event acts in a very similar way to the CSS :hover pseudo-class.

• Interface :MouseEvent
• Synchronicity :synchronous
• Bubbles : no
• Target : element()
• Cancelable : no
• Default action : none

General info

Specification

DOM L3

Interface

MouseEvent

Bubbles

No

Cancelable

No

Target

Element

Default Action

None

Properties

Property	Type	Description
target Read only	EventTarget	The event target (the topmost target in the DOM tree).
type Read only	DOMString	The type of event.
bubbles Read only	Boolean	Whether the event normally bubbles or not
cancelable Read only	Boolean	Whether the event is cancellable or not?
view Read only	WindowProxy	document.defaultView (window of the document)
detail Read only	long (float)	0.
currentTarget Read only	EventTarget	The node that had the event listener attached.
relatedTarget Read only	EventTarget	For mouseover, mouseout, mouseenter and mouseleave events: the target of the complementary event (the mouseleave target in the case of a mouseenter event). null otherwise.
screenX Read only	long	The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in global (screen) coordinates.
screenY Read only	long	The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in global (screen) coordinates.
clientX Read only	long	The X coordinate of the mouse pointer in local (DOM content) coordinates.
clientY Read only	long	The Y coordinate of the mouse pointer in local (DOM content) coordinates.
button Read only	unsigned short	The button number that was pressed when the mouse event was fired: Left button=0, middle button=1 (if present), right button=2. For mice configured for left handed use in which the button actions are reversed the values are instead read from right to left.
buttons Read only	unsigned short	The buttons being pressed when the mouse event was fired: Left button=1, Right button=2, Middle (wheel) button=4, 4th button (typically, "Browser Back" button)=8, 5th button (typically, "Browser Forward" button)=16. If two or more buttons are pressed, returns the logical sum of the values. E.g., if Left button and Right button are pressed, returns 3 (=1 | 2). More info.
mozPressure Read only	float	The amount of pressure applied to a touch or tabdevice when generating the event; this value ranges between 0.0 (minimum pressure) and 1.0 (maximum pressure).

Examples

The mouseout documentation has an example illustrating the difference between mouseout and mouseleave.

The following example illustrates how to use mouseout to simulate the principle of event delegation for the mouseleave event.

<ul id="test">
  <li>
    <ul class="leave-sensitive">
      <li>item 1-1</li>
      <li>item 1-2</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
  <li>
    <ul class="leave-sensitive">
      <li>item 2-1</li>
      <li>item 2-2</li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

<script>
  var delegationSelector = ".leave-sensitive";

  document.getElementById("test").addEventListener("mouseout", function( event ) {
    var target = event.target,
        related = event.relatedTarget,
        match;

    // search for a parent node matching the delegation selector
    while ( target && target != document && !( match = matches( target, delegationSelector ) ) ) {
        target = target.parentNode;
    }

    // exit if no matching node has been found
    if ( !match ) { return; }

    // loop through the parent of the related target to make sure that it's not a child of the target
    while ( related && related != target && related != document ) {
        related = related.parentNode;
    }

    // exit if this is the case
    if ( related == target ) { return; }

    // the "delegated mouseleave" handler can now be executed
    // change the color of the text
    target.style.color = "orange";
    // reset the color after a small amount of time
    setTimeout(function() {
        target.style.color = "";
    }, 500);
    
    
  }, false);
 
 
  // function used to check if a DOM element matches a given selector
  // the following code can be replaced by this IE8 compatible function: https://gist.github.com/2851541
  function matches( elem, selector ){
    // the matchesSelector is prefixed in most (if not all) browsers
    return elem.matchesSelector( selector );
  };
</script>

Browser compatibility

[1] Implemented in bug 236215.

[2] Implemented in bug 432698.

[3] Safari 7 fires the event in many situations where it's not allowed to, making the whole event useless. See bug 470258 for the description of the bug (it existed in old Chrome versions as well). Safari 8 has correct behavior

[4] Implemented in bug 218093.

See also

• mousedown
• mouseup
• mousemove
• click
• dblclick
• mouseover
• mouseout
• mouseenter
• mouseleave
• contextmenu