Is there a way to make text unselectable on an HTM

Question

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• How to disable text selection highlighting? 40 answers

I'm building an HTML UI with some text elements, such as tab names, which look bad when selected. Unfortunately, it's very easy for a user to double-click a tab name, which selects it by default in many browsers.

I might be able to solve this with a JavaScript trick (I'd like to see those answers, too) -- but I'm really hoping there's something in CSS/HTML directly that works across all browsers.

Answer 1

Any JavaScript or CSS method is easily circumvented with Firebug (like Flickr's case).

You can use the ::selection pseudo-element in CSS to alter the highlight color.

If the tabs are links and the dotted rectangle in active state is of concern, you can remove that too (consider usability of course).

Answer 2

In most browsers, this can be achieved using CSS:

*.unselectable {
   -moz-user-select: -moz-none;
   -khtml-user-select: none;
   -webkit-user-select: none;

   /*
     Introduced in IE 10.
     See http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/msUserSelect/
   */
   -ms-user-select: none;
   user-select: none;
}

For IE < 10 and Opera, you will need to use the unselectable attribute of the element you wish to be unselectable. You can set this using an attribute in HTML:

<div id="foo" unselectable="on" class="unselectable">...</div>

Sadly this property isn't inherited, meaning you have to put an attribute in the start tag of every element inside the <div>. If this is a problem, you could instead use JavaScript to do this recursively for an element's descendants:

function makeUnselectable(node) {
    if (node.nodeType == 1) {
        node.setAttribute("unselectable", "on");
    }
    var child = node.firstChild;
    while (child) {
        makeUnselectable(child);
        child = child.nextSibling;
    }
}

makeUnselectable(document.getElementById("foo"));

Answer 3

Try this:

<div onselectstart="return false">some stuff</div>

Simple, but effective... works in current versions of all major browsers.

Answer 4

For an example of why it might be desirable to suppress selection, see SIMILE TImeline, which uses drag-and-drop to explore the timeline, during which accidental vertical mouse movement causes the labels to be highlighted unexpectedly, which looks weird.

Answer 5

Here's a Sass mixin (scss) for those interested. Compass/CSS 3 doesn't seem to have a user-select mixin.

// @usage use within a rule
// ex. img {@include user-select(none);}
// @param assumed valid user-select value
@mixin user-select($value)
{
    & {
        -webkit-touch-callout: $value;
        -webkit-user-select: $value;
        -khtml-user-select: $value;
        -moz-user-select: $value;
        -ms-user-select: $value;
        user-select: $value;
    }
}

Though Compass would do it in a more robust way, i.e. only add support for vendors you've chosen.

Answer 6

<script type="text/javascript">

/***********************************************
* Disable Text Selection script- © Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
* Visit Dynamic Drive at http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ for full source code

***********************************************/


function disableSelection(target){

    if (typeof target.onselectstart!="undefined") //IE route
        target.onselectstart=function(){return false}

    else if (typeof target.style.MozUserSelect!="undefined") //Firefox route
        target.style.MozUserSelect="none"

    else //All other route (ie: Opera)
        target.onmousedown=function(){return false}

    target.style.cursor = "default"
}



//Sample usages
//disableSelection(document.body) //Disable text selection on entire body
//disableSelection(document.getElementById("mydiv")) //Disable text selection on element with id="mydiv"


</script>

EDIT

Code apparently comes from http://www.dynamicdrive.com