Javascript select text with create range doesn't work in IE

Question

I have a javascript function to select the content of a cell (html table) onclick="select_cell(this)". No surprise, it works fine everywhere except IE. The weird part is that I discovered that if I set a timeout, it works... 100 ms was not enough: it was working half the time. With 200 ms, it's working great!

function select_cell(element){

        if (window.getSelection) {
            var range = document.createRange();
            setTimeout(function(){
              range.selectNode(element);
              window.getSelection().addRange(range);
            }, 200);
        }
        else if (document.selection) {
            var range = document.body.createTextRange();
            range.moveToElementText(element);
            range.select();
        }
}

The thing is that I don't like this timeout. Someone has an explanation? Or even better, a solution to skip this timeout?

Does this work for you -> http://jsfiddle.net/WdeTM/372/, and did you place that code after the elements in the DOM. — adeneo, Mar 10 '14 at 19:08
Yeah man! It works! Thank you so much! The main problem was if(document.selection). I replaced it by if(document.body.createTextRange) like your example and the problem was fixed! — pmrotule, Mar 10 '14 at 19:57

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

0

i posted here an answer for text selection, may be helpful to you, check this out

edited May 23 '17 at 12:32

Community

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answered Mar 10 '14 at 19:15

Amir Sherafatian

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Javascript select text with create range doesn't work in IE

1 Answers1