Can a selection object be created without any user interaction?

Question

Can a Selection object be created without any user interaction? window.getSelection() does return a Selection object, but you can\'t modify() it u

Answer 1

If I understand what you're asking, then yes, you can programmatically set the selection using its addRange() method. For example, to select the whole of the document's element when the page loads, you could do:

function selectBody() {
    var range = document.createRange();
    range.selectNode(document.body);
    var sel = window.getSelection();
    sel.removeAllRanges();
    sel.addRange(range);
}

window.onload = selectBody;

This doesn't work on IE < 9, which has a whole different approach to ranges and selections.