Question

I’m building a wysiwyg-editor with an editable iframe using document.execCommand(). Now i need to use the "insertHTML" command which works perfectly in Chrome and Firefox but of course it doesn’t work in Internet Explorer:

function run() {
  document.getElementById("target").focus();
  document.execCommand("insertHTML", false, "<b>ins</b>");
}

<div contenteditable id="target">contenteditable</div>
<button onclick="run()">contenteditable.focus() + document.execCommand("insertHTML", false, "&lt;b>ins&lt;/b>")</button>

What is the standard solution to this problem? It’s okay if it only works in IE8 but IE7-support would be nice too.

Answer 1

In IE <= 10 you can use the pasteHTML method of the TextRange representing the selection:

var doc = document.getElementById("your_iframe").contentWindow.document;

if (doc.selection && doc.selection.createRange) {
    var range = doc.selection.createRange();
    if (range.pasteHTML) {
        range.pasteHTML("<b>Some bold text</b>");
    }
}

UPDATE

In IE 11, document.selection is gone and insertHTML is still not supported, so you’ll need something like the following:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/6691294/96100