Detecting changes to items prior to submitting page

Question

Is there a simple way of checking whether content has changed on a page prior to submitting that page?
I am trying to alert users to changes to a page which would be lost if the user moves off the page without submitting it. (Much the same as, say, notepad prompts a user if they are exiting a session without saving the content .. if no changes have occurred no message is displayed)
(I do not want to save/reference all old item values and compare them with the current form value, if possible ... ideally, I need a flag of some sort set if any change is made to the form)

Answer 1

Hi Graham,
You can do the following to set this up:
1 - Update EVERY column definition to include the following in the Element Attributes setting for the field:
onchange="htmldb_item_change();"
2 - In the Region Footer for the region containing the form, add in the following:
<script type="text/javascript">
function checkForChangedData()
if (htmldb_ch)
return confirm("Data has been changed. Continue anyway?");
else
return true;
</script>
3 - On the report template, you have four settings for pagination. Each setting includes:
<a href="#LINK#">
Change each one to:
<a href="#LINK#" onclick="checkForChangedData();">
Now when the user edits a field, the htmldb_ch value is set to true. When they click any of the pagination links, the checkForChangedData() function is called. If no data has been changed, this function returns true and the link is activated. If there have been data changes, the user is prompted to confirm whether or not they want to continue with the link - if they click "OK", the confirm() function returns true and they can continue; if they click "Cancel", the confirm() function returns false and this cancels the link click.
Clicking the Submit button, submits and reloads the page. The htmldb_ch value should be reset to false.
Regards
Andy