Availability

Navigator 2.0, Internet Explorer 3.0

Description

The confirm() method displays the specified question in a dialog box that pops up over window. The appearance of the dialog is platform-dependent, but it generally contains graphics that indicate that the user is being asked a question. The dialog contains OK and Cancel buttons that the user can use to answer the question. If the user clicks the OK button, then confirm() returns true. If the user clicks Cancel, then confirm() returns false.

The dialog box that is displayed by the confirm() method is modal--that is, it blocks all user input to the main browser window until the user dismisses the dialog by clicking on the OK or Cancel buttons. Since this method returns a value depending on the user's response to the dialog, JavaScript execution pauses in the call to confirm() and subsequent statements are not executed until the user responds to the dialog.

Usage

Note that the question displayed in the dialog is a string of plain text, not formatted HTML. You can use the newline character, \n, in your strings to break your question across multiple lines. You can also do some very rudimentary formatting using spaces and can approximate horizontal rules with underscore characters, but the results you achieve will depend greatly on the font used in the dialog, and will thus be system dependent.

Also, there is no way to change the labels that appear in the buttons of the dialog box (to make them read "Yes" and "No", for example). Therefore, you should take care to phrase your question or message in such a way that "OK" and "Cancel" are suitable responses.

See Also

"Window", "Window.alert()", "Window.prompt()"