Keep text selection when focus changes

Question

I have a normal textbox, and a lightbox with a text input.

I want to keep the user's selection in the textbox, even when the user focuses on the lightbox's text input.

Select text in normal textbox
Toggle lightbox
Focus on lightbox input

At step 3., the user's text selection is discarded. How can this be prevented? See Google docs link insertion lightbox for example.

Thanks :)

Update

Ok, so Google docs uses an iframe for the blank page section, which is how they are handling the multiple selections. Something like this (excuse the disgusting HTML):

// test.html
<html><body>
  <h1 onclick='lightbox();'>This is the main section</h1>
  <iframe src='frame.html'></iframe>
  <div id='lightbox' style='display: none; position: fixed; top: 0; left: 0; height: 100%; width: 100%; opacity: 0.8; background-color: black;'>
    <input type='text' name='url' />
  </div>
  <script type='text/javascript'>
    function lightbox() {
      document.getElementById('lightbox').style.display = 'block';
    }
  </script>
</body></html>

// frame.html
<p>This is my iframe</p>

Text selection in the iframe is independent of focus on the input in the lightbox. So if some of the text 'This is my iframe' is selected, then the lightbox is toggled and the cursor placed in the input, the iframe's text selection persists without any javascript.

I'm trying Nickolay's suggestion now.

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

6

From How to preserve text selection when opening a jQuery dialog: you have to preserve selection on blur and restore it on focus:

$("dialog").focus(function() {
  // save the selection
}).blur(function() {
  // set the text selection
});

Setting selection (from jQuery Set Cursor Position in Text Area):

$.fn.selectRange = function(start, end) {
  return this.each(function() {
    if(this.setSelectionRange) {
      this.focus();
      this.setSelectionRange(start, end);
    } else if(this.createTextRange) {
      var range = this.createTextRange();
      range.collapse(true);
      range.moveEnd('character', end);
      range.moveStart('character', start);
      range.select();
    }
  });
};
$('#elem').selectRange(3,5);

Getting selection: http://laboratorium.0xab.cd/jquery/fieldselection/0.1.0/test.html

edited May 23 '17 at 12:13

Community

1
1

answered Oct 20 '09 at 07:00

Nickolay

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Ok, I'm finally getting into this, but am stuck with IE vs FF. The above is pure IE - anyone have any FF pointers? – nfm Oct 28 '09 at 00:51
What exactly doesn't work in Firefox? I don't see why the first snippet wouldn't, just tried the second and it works... – Nickolay Oct 28 '09 at 07:19
My mistake - FF executes the `if`, MSIE the `else`. – nfm Oct 30 '09 at 01:52
@Nickolay I am not sure if your solution works. Please check this http://jsfiddle.net/sandeepan_nits/qpZdJ/1/ The selection inside the textarea does not persist when it loses focus. – Sandeepan Nath Dec 19 '10 at 20:47
@Nickolay, may be I did not understand how it should work. Should this be able to persist selection even after focus is gone? Please check this http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4484755/replacing-text-inside-textarea-without-focus – Sandeepan Nath Dec 19 '10 at 21:36
@Sandeepan Nath: no, it's supposed to restore selection after the textarea that had the selection is re-focused. From the update to the original question here it seems that selection is per-document, so to persist selection even after focus is gone you have to use an iframe. – Nickolay Dec 22 '10 at 16:23
it seems easy for textarea, not pure text/html as i'm having here http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6037265/how-i-would-show-dialog-when-i-select-any-text-on-page-using-jquery/6037295#6037295 – egyamado May 17 '11 at 22:10

Keep text selection when focus changes

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