Question

I’m after the following functionality:

• user clicks on or tabs into a textbox
• all text in the textbox is selected, unless the textbox already had focus, in which case the default clicking/selecting functionality should occur

Is this possible?

---

This works in Firefox 5

$('input[type="text"]').live('focus', function () {
    this.select();
});

http://jsfiddle.net/HmQxZ/13/

Chrome and IE8 selects all the text for only a split second

---

This works* in Chrome

$('input[type="text"]').live('click', function () {
    this.select();
});

http://jsfiddle.net/HmQxZ/12/

Firefox and IE8 selects all text but upon subsequent clicking, the text remains selected.

*kind of works, after textbox has focus, clicking on it alternates between selecting all text and being able to click where the blinking caret goes. This is probably acceptable.

Answer 1

Just delay it by a millisecond with setTimeout:

$('input[type="text"]').live('focus', function() {
    var inp = this;
    setTimeout(function() {
        inp.select();
    }, 1);
});

http://jsfiddle.net/HmQxZ/14/

What’s happening is some other browser event is setting the selection after you’ve selected the text. So, by waiting a millisecond, you let all the browser events finish, and then select the text. Nothing will undo it now.