Question

I am using the JavaScript select event to detect when the user selects a range of characters within a textarea. However, the event does not seem to be invoked when the selection is cleared, either by clicking elsewhere in the textarea, or by moving the caret.

I have tested this in Chrome 12 and Firefox 4

Answer 1

There’s onblur event which you can append after a selection has being made 🙂

var t = document.getElementsByTagName('textarea')[0];
t.onselect = function() {
    alert('select');
    if (typeof(t.onblur) !== 'function') {
        t.onblur = function() {
            alert('selection cleared');
            t.onblur = null;
        }
    }
}

jsFiddle

My idea: create a function which will be executed after the text has been selected, and after it’s being executed unset it … since there’s no text selection any more, and when the text has been selected again – the function will be defined again