How to distinguish between left and right mouse click with jQuery

How do you obtain the clicked mouse button using jQuery?

$('div').bind('click', function(){
    alert('clicked');
});

this is triggered by both right and left click, what is the way of being able to catch right mouse click? I'd be happy if something like below exists:

$('div').bind('rightclick', function(){ 
    alert('right mouse button is pressed');
});

As of jQuery version 1.1.3, event.which normalizes event.keyCode and event.charCode so you don't have to worry about browser compatibility issues. Documentation on event.which

event.which will give 1, 2 or 3 for left, middle and right mouse buttons respectively so:

$('#element').mousedown(function(event) {
    switch (event.which) {
        case 1:
            alert('Left Mouse button pressed.');
            break;
        case 2:
            alert('Middle Mouse button pressed.');
            break;
        case 3:
            alert('Right Mouse button pressed.');
            break;
        default:
            alert('You have a strange Mouse!');
    }
});

Edit: I changed it to work for dynamically added elements using .on() in jQuery 1.7 or above:

$(document).on("contextmenu", ".element", function(e){
   alert('Context Menu event has fired!');
   return false;
});

Demo: jsfiddle.net/Kn9s7/5

[Start of original post] This is what worked for me:

$('.element').bind("contextmenu",function(e){
   alert('Context Menu event has fired!');
   return false;
}); 

In case you are into multiple solutions ^^

Edit: Tim Down brings up a good point that it's not always going to be a right-click that fires the contextmenu event, but also when the context menu key is pressed (which is arguably a replacement for a right-click)


You can easily tell which mouse button was pressed by checking the which property of the event object on mouse events:

/*
  1 = Left   mouse button
  2 = Centre mouse button
  3 = Right  mouse button
*/

$([selector]).mousedown(function(e) {
    if (e.which === 3) {
        /* Right mouse button was clicked! */
    }
});