When you type a backspace, IE returns you to the previous page; even if your event handlers have cancelled event bubbling.
a page showing this backspace bugA textarea does not exhibit this bug. As a workaround, a textarea is always given focus, and forwards its keyboard events to the DOM object we would have liked to have focus. We are then left with hidding this textarea...
You cannot put the textarea in a hidden DIV, div style="visibility:hidden", since IE will raise an error is you attempt to give focus to a hidden node.
Enclosing the textarea with div style="overflow:hidden;width:0px;height:0px" does not work in IE, you must give a height >0 or IE leaves room for the textarea element in layout the page!
But enclosing the textarea with div style="background:pink;position:absolute;clip:rect(0 0 0 0)" works fine.
a page which has a fix for this backspace bug
Even though the onkeydown event created by pressing the Backspace key has had its event bubbling cancelled, IE will ignor this, and still cause the Backspace to trigger a return to the previous page.
There must be a kludge in IE that lets a textarea 'eat' backspace events in some special fashion.