I have a button that makes a div move on the page, but I want for the button to make it move only once. If the user keeps clicking the button right now, the div keeps moving in the same direction.
A simple and general way might be just setting a flag.
var box_can_move = true;
$('button_id').on('click', function(event, element){
if(box_can_move){
box_can_move = false;
//move box;
}
});
As alluded by clockworkgeek's comment, a big advantage of having a flag is being able to manipulate and inspect the state (of wether the box has already moved or not) directly without coupling it with the event handling logic.