Non-standard
This feature is non-standard and is not on a standards track. Do not use it on production sites facing the Web: it will not work for every user. There may also be large incompatibilities between implementations and the behavior may change in the future.
Summary
The explicit original target of the event. (Mozilla-specific)
If the event was retargeted for some reason other than an anonymous boundary crossing, this will be set to the target before the retargeting occurs. For example, mouse events are retargeted to their parent node when they happen over text nodes (see bug 185889), and in that case currentTarget will show the parent and explicitOriginalTarget will show the text node.
explicitOriginalTarget differs from originalTarget in that it will never contain anonymous content.
See also Comparison of Event Targets
Example
This property can be used with <command> to get the event details of the original object calling the command.
function myCommand(ev) {
alert(ev.explicitOriginalTarget.nodeName); // returns 'menuitem'
}
<command id="my-cmd-anAction" oncommand="myCommand(event);"/>
<menulist><menupopup>
<menuitem label="Get my element name!" command="my-cmd-anAction"/>
</menupopup></menulist>
Specification
This is a Mozilla-specific property. Defined in /dom/public/idl/events/nsIDOMNSEvent.idl
This event property is not defined in the W3.org DOM Level 2 Events