Thanks Alex,
the ":focus" is indeed another workaround for the same situation.
I hope to find the time to run a performance comparison and go for whatever is faster.
The "focus" workaround is a little in the spirit of the "inside EJS engine" solution that I am hoping to find in 1.1.6.
The "input" event is perfect for this app because it is "Chrome only".
It is a high workload, long living, one-page MVC app for a limited amount of users, not reachable for the general public.
It depends on Chrome's fast Javascript engine.
I have no intention to ever let it run on IE.