how do I make contents of html text fields, text areas and select boxes selectable using CTRL-A?

Question

right now when I do CTRL A on my (fairly lame) webpages, the contents of textboxes and of listboxes/select-boxes is not selected and hence cannot be easily copied. Is there a way to fix this, either directly or by replacing these lame widgets with some similar ones that explicitly support this feature?

Answer 1

The easiest solution might be to create an alternate version of the page, that has the text in the fields out of the various form controls so it can be copied. So, instead of a "printable version", you would make a "copiable version".

The other option would be to create look-alike fields with CSS and then just recreate the functionality of each form field type with JS. Probably more work than it's worth though, and you will almost certainly break accessibility.