Acorn
Acorn

Reputation: 50497

Making an element unselectable using jQuery

What's the best way to make an element unselectable using jQuery?

I know you can use onselectstart="return false;" ondragstart="return false;" in the HTML, but I'm not sure how cross browser compatible that is.

I also see someone's made a jQuery plugin: http://plugins.jquery.com/project/Unselectable .. would a plugin like that be necessary?

Is there a simple, compatible way to make an element unselectable?

The reason for wanting to do this is purely aesthetic. With webpages that have dragging or click events, it's not very nice when things get selected.

Upvotes: 4

Views: 13554

Answers (4)

shai
shai

Reputation: 1

If you use JqueryUI you can set class="ui-state-default" to the div that you dont want to be selected.

<div class="ui-state-default"></div>

Upvotes: 0

user714055
user714055

Reputation:

I believe this is a better answer.

$('*[data-noselect="true"]').focus(
    function () {
        $(this).blur();
    });

$('*[data-noselect="true"] *').focus(
    function () {
        $(this).blur();
    });

Then you can just add a data-noselect="true" to any element.

Upvotes: 0

CodeJoust
CodeJoust

Reputation: 3790

$('.noselect').live('selectstart dragstart', function(evt){ evt.preventDefault(); return false; });

Just bind the event to a live, and return false, or prevent default.

Upvotes: 5

Sunny
Sunny

Reputation: 6336

I think jQuery will abstract the browser variance & so it will help you make HTML elements unselectable.

Having said that, please note that the client can decide to switch off javascript, in which case you need to ensure that he still cannot do anything that will cause harm...

HTH.

Upvotes: 1

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