One of the things I\'d like to do in my browser-based application is allow the user to select some text (not in a
That jQuery plugin is cool but it accomplishes a very specific task: wrap the text you highlight with a tag. This may be just what you want. But if you don't want to (or are in a situation where you can't) add any extraneous markup to your page, you might try the following solution instead:
function getSelectedText() {
var txt = '';
if (window.getSelection) {
txt = window.getSelection();
}
else if (document.getSelection) {
txt = document.getSelection();
}
else if (document.selection) {
txt = document.selection.createRange().text;
}
else return;
return txt;
}
This function returns an object representing the text selection. It works across browsers (though I suspect the objects it returns will be slightly different depending on the browser and only dependable for the actual text of the result rather than any of the additional properties).
Note: I originally discovered that code fragment here: http://www.codetoad.com/javascript_get_selected_text.asp