If you called .triggerHandler() on a focus event - the browsers default focus action would not be triggered, only the event handlers bound to the focus event.

Edit code and click me	Your Result (Some examples do not work in Google Chrome):
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html> <head> <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript"> $(document).ready(function(){ $("#old").click(function(){ $("input").trigger("focus"); }); $("#new").click(function(){ $("input").triggerHandler("focus"); }); $("input").focus(function(){ $("<span>Focused!</span>").appendTo("body").fadeOut(1000); }); }); </script> </head> <body> <button id="old">.trigger("focus")</button> <button id="new">.triggerHandler("focus")</button><br/><br/> <input type="text" value="To Be Focused"/> </body> </html>
Edit the code above and click to see the result	www.xhtml.co.il - Try it yourself