Element: mouseover event

The mouseover event is fired at an Element when a pointing device (such as a mouse or trackpad) is used to move the cursor onto the element or one of its child elements.

Examples

The following example illustrates the difference between mouseover and mouseenter events.

HTML

<ul id="test">
  <li>item 1</li>
  <li>item 2</li>
  <li>item 3</li>
</ul>

JavaScript

let test = document.getElementById("test");
  
// This handler will be executed only once when the cursor
// moves over the unordered list
test.addEventListener("mouseenter", function( event ) {   
  // highlight the mouseenter target
  event.target.style.color = "purple";

  // reset the color after a short delay
  setTimeout(function() {
    event.target.style.color = "";
  }, 500);
}, false);

// This handler will be executed every time the cursor
// is moved over a different list item
test.addEventListener("mouseover", function( event ) {   
  // highlight the mouseover target
  event.target.style.color = "orange";

  // reset the color after a short delay
  setTimeout(function() {
    event.target.style.color = "";
  }, 500);
}, false);

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Introduction to events
• mousedown
• mouseup
• mousemove
• click
• dblclick
• mouseover
• mouseout
• mouseenter
• mouseleave
• contextmenu