Prevent text selection after double click

Question

I'm handling the dblclick event on a span in my web app. A side-effect is that the double click selects text on the page. How can I prevent this selection from happening?

Answer 1

function clearSelection() {
    if(document.selection && document.selection.empty) {
        document.selection.empty();
    } else if(window.getSelection) {
        var sel = window.getSelection();
        sel.removeAllRanges();
    }
}

You can also apply these styles to the span for all non-IE browsers:

span.no_selection {
    -moz-user-select: none; // mozilla browsers
    -khtml-user-select: none; // webkit browsers
}

Answer 2

or, on mozilla:

document.body.onselectstart = function() { return false; } // Or any html object

On IE,

document.body.onmousedown = function() { return false; } // valid for any html object as well

Answer 3

A simple Javascript function that makes the content inside a page-element unselectable:

function makeUnselectable(elem) {
  if (typeof(elem) == 'string')
    elem = document.getElementById(elem);
  if (elem) {
    elem.onselectstart = function() { return false; };
    elem.style.MozUserSelect = "none";
    elem.style.KhtmlUserSelect = "none";
    elem.unselectable = "on";
  }
}