Possibly one of these will be useful:

https://github.com/madrobby/keymaster

https://github.com/ccampbell/mousetrap

Thanks for the js library recommendations. I've taken a look at keymaster, and it's mostly focused around modifier keys used in shortcuts. I'm currently using google closure library, but I will need to add more key recognition and failsafes in case there is a unrecognized keyboard layout.

Same here on a german keyboard layout (Linux & Firefox 14.0.1). It works well until I reach a special key, which kind of spoils the whole thing.

Wouldn't it be better to have an input field and simply read what has been typed in it? It's not as if you need to have something else focused while doing it. That would eliminate all international keyboard problems in one go, even without a dedicated library.

Not quite as important, but it seems that Caps Lock isn't being registered either (did the Rails demo and some of the constants would be rather tedious with only the shift key).

I'm using a standard Brazilian keyboard. The colon was mapped to the US layout location, but I could not type {, even though I knew the location on a US layout. Maybe because that key is a dead key here.

I would be very glad if there were an "ignore layout" option that dropped support for any layout difference, so I could type as in a US layout and at least finish the exercises.

Happens to me too, with a slightly modified latin-american keyboard layout

Ah! Swedish keyboard here (English operator though). Pity that was fun until I got to a bracket.