Clear Text Selection with JavaScript

Question

Simple question which I can't find the answer to: how can I use JavaScript (or jQuery) to deselect any text which may be selected on a webpage? E.G. user clicks and drags to highlight a bit of text -- I want to have a function deselectAll() which clears this selection. How should I go about writing it?

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

window.getSelection() lets you access the selected text, from there, there's a few things you can do to manipulate it..

Read More: Developer Mozilla DOM Selection

Answer 2

if (window.getSelection) {
  if (window.getSelection().empty) {  // Chrome
    window.getSelection().empty();
  } else if (window.getSelection().removeAllRanges) {  // Firefox
    window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();
  }
} else if (document.selection) {  // IE?
  document.selection.empty();
}

Credit to Mr. Y.

Answer 3

Best to test the features you want directly:

var sel = window.getSelection ? window.getSelection() : document.selection;
if (sel) {
    if (sel.removeAllRanges) {
        sel.removeAllRanges();
    } else if (sel.empty) {
        sel.empty();
    }
}