How could I emulate an HTML password field (but one which fires keydown events)?

Question

I need to be able to record keyboard events on elements that act like password (masked) inputs.

It sounds sinister, but I assure you it's not. I am not a phisher or scam artist of any kind. My users will be made aware that there behaviour is being analysed and are instructed not to enter a password that they use anywhere else.

With that out of the way, does anyone know of a way to capture keyboard on a password field? The default behaviour is that no keypress, keyup or keydown events are fired when a password input has focus. (At least in Chrome, but even this is unacceptable for us.)

The only way I can think to do it would be to use an invisible input laid over a password field? But I'm not even sure how I'd do this.

All suggestions welcomed.

Answer 1

password strength indicators do this.

Some examples:

• http://simplythebest.net/scripts/ajax/ajax_password_strength.html
• http://www.asp.net/ajax/ajaxcontroltoolkit/Samples/PasswordStrength/PasswordStrength.aspx

Answer 2

Where did you get the idea that Chrome doesn't fire key events on input boxes with type="password"? I would suggest that there's a problem with the code you've tried.

Here's an example: http://jsfiddle.net/UnL8q/ - Albeit using jQuery, but jQuery just maps to the DOM events anyway.