Question

I have an image selector that allows to choose an image from a gallery, then fills in the URL into a <input type="text"> field. The URLs can be awfully long, and always seeing the first half of the URL in the text field has very little informational value.

Does somebody know a way to “scroll” to the very right of the text field so that the end of the URL is visible instead of the beginning? Without resorting to a textarea.

Answer 1

All browsers except IE6-8/Opera

Set HTMLInputElement.setSelectionRange() to the length of the input value after explicitly setting the focus(). The disadvantage is that it scrolls back to start once blurred.

var foo = document.getElementById("foo");
foo.value = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1962168/scroll-to-the-very-right-of-a-long-text-input";
foo.focus();
foo.setSelectionRange(foo.value.length,foo.value.length);

<input id="foo">  

All browsers except IE/Opera

If you don’t care about IE in its entirety, then set Element.scrollLeft to Element.scrollWidth. The disadvantage is the less browser support.

var foo = document.getElementById("foo");
foo.value = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1962168/scroll-to-the-very-right-of-a-long-text-input";
foo.scrollLeft = foo.scrollWidth;

<input id="foo">

All browsers

If you’d like to support every single browser, consider to trick it with the dir (direction) attribute which you set to rtl (right-to-left). The disadvantage is that it’s a hack which really need to be taken into consideration when it’s editable and/or you develop a direction sensitive website, but this works on all browsers and is great on readonly inputs.

var foo = document.getElementById("foo");
foo.value = "http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1962168/scroll-to-the-very-right-of-a-long-text-input";

<input id="foo" dir="rtl">