Question

Can anyone suggest a plugin which can handle text selections in text areas (cross browser)?

I’m looking for a plugin which can:

• Get current selection
• Replace current selection
• Select a range

(IE uses createTextRange while other browsers use setSelectionRange. There ought to exist an plugin which can do the above so that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel.)

Answer 1

jQuery Fieldselection:
https://github.com/localhost/jquery-fieldselection

See:
https://github.com/localhost/jquery-fieldselection/blob/master/jquery-fieldselection.js

Implements: getSelection, replaceSelection

Does not implement: currentSelection

Rangy:
Implements: getSelection, ReplaceSelection, CurrentSelection

(note: not a jquery plugin, but widely applicable still)

A cross-browser JavaScript range and selection library. It provides a simple standards-based API for performing common DOM Range and Selection tasks in all major browsers, abstracting away the wildly different implementations of this functionality between Internet Explorer and DOM-compliant browsers.

Seems to implement what you want, for demo’s see:
http://rangy.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/core.html

http://code.google.com/p/rangy/

See also: Jquery: selectionStart for non textarea elements

Rangyinputs
A jquery plugin that offers similar functionality as Rangy, except for inputs instead of arbitrairy DOM elements.

A small cross-browser JavaScript library for obtaining and manipulating selections within and HTML elements.

Demo: http://rangyinputs.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/demos/textinputs_jquery.html

Project: http://code.google.com/p/rangyinputs/