Get selected text from HTML by javascript?

Question

I have a page with formated text and a toolbar (images with click events) beside it. One of the tool-commands is meant to be "mark yellow". (The text has to be read only and is formated.)

I tried to use document.getSelection() and window.getSelection(), but they seem to be designed for input fields only.

The other problem is, that as I click the tool bar my selection gets lost.

How do I get the selected text without loosing the selection?

Solution:

The clue was to use onmousedown="" or jQuery: .mousedown() function to avoid loosing the selection.

Answer 1

Here is how to get text selection with Javascript.