jquery selector with exlude of element & elements children

Question

I have a div used for filtering and i want it to close when anything outside of the div is clicked. The selector I am trying to build, basically selects all elements except a specific element and excludes its children. Here is what ive tried, but havent been able to get working

$('*:not(:has(.exclude *))').live('click', function() {HideFilter();});

page structure is simplified to this:

<div></div>
<div>
 <div></div>
 <div>
  <div class="exclude"><inputs></div>
 </div>
 <div></div>
</div>

so i want all of the divs, but the one and everything in the .exclude to have the event. Ive been at this for a while, i need some help.

Answer 1

how about a slightly different strategy:

close everything when anything but the div is clicked:

$("body").click(function(e){
  if($(e.target).hasClass("exclude")){
    //show stuff
  } else {
    //hide stuff
  }
});

something like that

Answer 2

Have you tried

$('*:not(.exclude, .exclude *)').live( ... )

? [edit[ Ah I see - the problem is that even if you exclude the stuff, the events still bubble up.

Try something like this:

$('*').live('click', function(e) {
  if (!$(e.target).is('.exclude, .exclude *'))
    // do interesting stuff
  }
  return false;
});

That should stop event propagation on the excluded things without actually doing anything.

Example page: http://gutfullofbeer.net/balloon.html