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Stephen Cole
Courses Plus Student 15,592 PointsWhy did Reggie add an `if` statement?
In the video, Reggie added an if
statement to his event handler:
taskList.addEventListener('mouseover', (event) {
if (event.target.tagName === 'LI') {
event.target.textContent = event.target.textContent.toUpperCase();
})
In my code, I did not add an if
statement and it worked fine:
taskList.addEventListener('mouseover', (e) => {
e.target.textContent = e.target.textContent.toUpperCase();
});
Why add an if
statement? Will this address some other type of unintended consequence in the future?
2 Answers

Bella Bradbury
Web Development Techdegree Student 14,361 PointsStephen,
You're right on point! It's a good idea to add specificity in to ensure that your code continues to work the way you intended. Adding in a conditional like this can help with many little things down the line, like ensuring that a user can only press a page button and not the space around it when trying to navigate pages.
Happy coding!

Alexander Graham
7,568 PointsHey, I agree that the 'if' statement is not needed, Reggie mentiones that 'taskList' is a reference to the div parent containing the 'ul' and the list items, however that's not the case... 'taskList' is a direct reference to the 'ul' already, so it should work perfectly without specifying you are triggering the event only with the list items.