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

Absolutely position divs over the text area with a z-index higher and give these divs a transparent GIF background graphic.

Note after a bit more thought - You'd need to have these 'covers' be linked so clicking on them would take you to where the tab was supposed to, which means you could/should do this with the anchor element set to display:box, width and height set as well as the transparent background image.

Answer 2

Images can be selected too.

There are limits to using JavaScript to deselect text, as it might happen even in places where you want to select. To ensure a rich and successful career, steer clear of all requirements that need ability to influence or manage the browser beyond the ordinary... unless, of course, they are paying you extremely well.

Answer 3

There are many occasions when turning off selectability enhances the user experience.

For instance allowing the user to copy a block of text on the page without copying the text of any interface elements associated with it (that would become interspersed within the text being copied).

Answer 4

"If your content is really interesting, then there is little you can ultimately do to protect it"

That's true, but most copying, in my experience, has nothing to do with "ultimately" or geeks or determined plagiarists or anything like that. It's usually casual copying by clueless people, and even a simple, easily defeated protection (easily defeated by folks like us, that is) works quite well to stop them. They don't know anything about "view source" or caches or anything else... heck, they don't even know what a web browser is or that they're using one.