Detect if mouse button is down when the mouse entered active area (mouse was pressed down outside this area)

I am new to JavaScript so I might be missing something obvious here, but this is the problem. I am not getting the mouse down / up event if the event happened outside the active area under JavaScript control, so if the mouse enters the active area (onmouseover event) with the left button down, is there a way to know that the button is down?

Added info : Ideally, I would like to keep track of the mouse even outside the browser window - the way Google maps does - try clicking down the mouse button and move outside the browser - this works in chrome and with some quirks in Firefox. Is it possible to do this 开发者_高级运维while remaining within the bounds of JavaScript or is it some proprietary stuff?

Yes: ensure that the mouse event handlers to detect a mouse-down event are attached to some element that occupies the entire viewport. For instance the HTML (document) element...