Which javascript events can trigger a popup without being blocked?

Question

I'd like to trigger a popup dialog when a user hits enter in a search box that allows them to give more details before searching. Of course, this works fine when they click on the search button. The popup tends to get blocked when I try to use a keypress handler to trigger the popup when the user hits the enter key.

Which Javascript events can safely trigger a popup? Is onclick the only one or is there a key handling event (or some other way I haven't thought of)?

Here's an example:

$('input.search').keypress(function(event){
    if (event.keyCode == 13) {
        // trigger popup
    }
});

This does trigger a popup, but popup blockers will catch it most of the time.

Answer 1

Popup blockers today tend to block everything but direct mouse actions. Perhaps you should consider using ajax to load the preview instead of a popup, then overlaying the ajax result on the page.