Get selected text on the page (not in a textarea) with jQuery

Question

This plugin lets you grab text the user has selected in a textarea, and this site has non-jQuery-based instructions for grabbing text the user has selected outside of a text

Answer 1

The reason it's hard to find a plug-in for this isn't that it isn't very "jQuery"ish. By that I mean that jQuery plugins normally operate on jQuery objects and the selection has nothing to do with any elements.

Edit: I missed the fact you posted this link in your question but I'll leave it below for completeness since my version is formatted better (but otherwise identical). :)