I want to be able to close an alert box automatically using javascript after a certain amount of time or on a specific event (i.e. onkeypress). From my research, it doesn't look like that's possible with the built-in alert() function. Is there a way to override it and have control over the dialog box that it opens?
Also, I don't want an override that shows a hidden div as the alert. I need an actual dialog box.
I guess you could open a popup window and call that a dialog box. I'm unsure of the details, but I'm pretty sure you can close a window programmatically that you opened from javascript. Would this suffice?
no control over the dialog box, if you had control over the dialog box you could write obtrusive javascript code. (Its is not a good idea to use alert for anything except debugging)
If you do it programmatically in JS it will be like reinventing the wheel. I recommend using a jQuery plugin called jGrowl
I want to be able to close an alert box automatically using javascript after a certain amount of time or on a specific event (i.e. onkeypress)
A sidenote: if you have an Alert("data"), you won't be able to keep code running in background (AFAIK)... . the dialog box is a modal window, so you can't lose focus too. So you won't have any keypress or timer running...
The only real alternative here is to use some sort of custom widget with a modal option. Have a look at jQuery UI for an example of a dialog with these features. Similar things exist in just about every JS framework you can mention.
As mentioned previously you really can't do this. You can do a modal dialog inside the window using a UI framework, or you can have a popup window, with a script that auto-closes after a timeout... each has a negative aspect. The modal window inside the browser won't create any notification if the window is minimized, and a programmatic (timer based) popup is likely to be blocked by modern browsers, and popup blockers.