Get selected text position and place an element next to it

Question

tl;dr

The idea is to allow a user to mark any text and see menu pop-up just next to the selection, with possible actions to apply to the selected text.

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Answer 1

You could position a marker span at the end of the selection, get its coordinates using jQuery, place your button at those coordinates and remove the marker span.

The following should get you started:

var markSelection = (function() {
    var markerTextChar = "\ufeff";
    var markerTextCharEntity = "";

    var markerEl, markerId = "sel_" + new Date().getTime() + "_" + Math.random().toString().substr(2);

    var selectionEl;

    return function(win) {
        win = win || window;
        var doc = win.document;
        var sel, range;
        // Branch for IE <= 8 
        if (doc.selection && doc.selection.createRange) {
            // Clone the TextRange and collapse
            range = doc.selection.createRange().duplicate();
            range.collapse(false);

            // Create the marker element containing a single invisible character by creating literal HTML and insert it
            range.pasteHTML('' + markerTextCharEntity + '');
            markerEl = doc.getElementById(markerId);
        } else if (win.getSelection) {
            sel = win.getSelection();
            range = sel.getRangeAt(0).cloneRange();
            range.collapse(false);

            // Create the marker element containing a single invisible character using DOM methods and insert it
            markerEl = doc.createElement("span");
            markerEl.id = markerId;
            markerEl.appendChild( doc.createTextNode(markerTextChar) );
            range.insertNode(markerEl);
        }

        if (markerEl) {
            // Lazily create element to be placed next to the selection
            if (!selectionEl) {
                selectionEl = doc.createElement("div");
                selectionEl.style.border = "solid darkblue 1px";
                selectionEl.style.backgroundColor = "lightgoldenrodyellow";
                selectionEl.innerHTML = "<- selection";
                selectionEl.style.position = "absolute";

                doc.body.appendChild(selectionEl);
            }

            // Find markerEl position http://www.quirksmode.org/js/findpos.html
        var obj = markerEl;
        var left = 0, top = 0;
        do {
            left += obj.offsetLeft;
            top += obj.offsetTop;
        } while (obj = obj.offsetParent);

            // Move the button into place.
            // Substitute your jQuery stuff in here
            selectionEl.style.left = left + "px";
            selectionEl.style.top = top + "px";

            markerEl.parentNode.removeChild(markerEl);
        }
    };
})();