Mozilla + IE6 Javascript Mousewheel

You would think that catching the mousewheel events in the browser would be pretty standard by now but it's not. Below is code that will catch the event in IE6 and Mozilla. Because the code I could scrape together only suppoorts these two browsers I have to supply alternate controls to scroll. It's not a big deal, but it seems a bit backwards. The code below could possibly be cleaned up a little depending on your requirements.

/*
   Cross browser mousewheel sucks!
   This function allows you to pass a node and callback
   to run when the mousewheel is rolled.
   The function will work in Mozilla and IE6
*/
function handleMousewheel(node, callback)
{
    if (node.addEventListener) {
        node.addEventListener("DOMMouseScroll", callback, false);
    }
    else {
        node.onmousewheel = callback;
    }
}

/* Scroll posts up or down depending on mousewheel event. */
function the_callback(e)
{
    if (!e) e = window.event;
    
    if ( e.wheelDelta <= 0 || e.detail > 0) {
        alert('down');
    }
    else {
        alert('up');
    }
}

//Connect your callback to the node
the_node = document.getElementById('node_id');
handleMousewheel(the_node, the_callback);