[mjjwatson]

I'm making an application for teachers, where they can input their own question sets and use them in various ways (print off pdfs, run flash apps, etc).

I have had some feedback from the science departments that they want a way to type in superscript and subscript in the question forms.

I'm a little stumped on how to make this happen. I know how to style sub/superscript of course with css, but ideally they could use a shortcut key, like on a wordprocessor, to enter superscript numbers, for example alt+2 when typing in a textfield.

I really don't know where to begin finding out if this is possible. If anyone has any pointers it would be ultra appreciated. Thanks.

[End User]

How about using a WYSIWYG input area, like the CKEditor, TinyMCE, Nicedit, or something similar?

[mjjwatson]

If I need to, I guess I will, although part of me wants to learn how to do this from scratch. I'm building everything from scratch for this project, which is actually a first for me, (normally I hack away at other people's things or CMSs, etc).

Am I in the right place to assume that javascript is the answer?

[TwoD]

Yes, JavaScript can be used to catch input events, which is what those editors End User suggested does to do things with shortcuts.

Writing a tutorial for this would take some time, so I'll just point you to some links for now. You can try QuirksMode (link in signature) for a good reference on dealing with events across various browsers. Once you have caught the event and know it's time to insert say

Code:

<span class='redBoldText'></span>

or

Code:

<strong></strong>

around the selected text, you need to get the document's selection. Depending on the browser, t's a call to a method of the window or document object. You might also have to convert that selection to a range object, again depending on the browser. The range/selection object can then be manipulated and wrapped in your tag.

Looking at one of the WYSIWYG editors with less features might be a good idea as you can take ideas from already working code.