Do events allow communication only with the parent element?

Events in a web development context, particularly when discussing frameworks like OutSystems, are not restricted to communication only with parent elements. The correct understanding is that events can facilitate communication in various directions—between child elements and their parent elements, sibling elements, or even components that are distant in the DOM hierarchy.

In a typical event-driven architecture, when an event occurs in a child element, it can be caught and handled by the parent. However, the parent is not the only recipient of event communication. Event propagation allows for the possibilities of both bubbling (where events bubble up from child to parent) and capturing (where events can be captured during their journey down from parent to child). This means events can be managed at different levels, permitting more flexible interaction design.

Furthermore, siblings can interact through shared parent handlers or even through global event systems, which expand the communication capabilities further beyond just parent-child interactions.

Thus, the characterization of events as enabling communication only with the parent element does not accurately reflect their operational capabilities in a reactive web development context.