Grabbing current value of form input text

Grabbing current value of form input text

This should be fairly straightforward but I'm having some unexpected trouble.

I have a form with an input:

  1. <input type="text" id="mysearchfield" value="search me">
...the value attribute 'search me' is what is displayed on default page load.

If I focus on the text field and type into it, "Hello World!"

How can I see that new value?

I've tried the obvious:

  1. $('#mysearchfield').val();
This just simply returns the ORIGINAL value of "search me" though.

How can I pick up the new value on the fly?  It must be possible, no?

Thanks!