The selection Object

Both the Internet Explorer and the Netscape Navigator support a selection object, and, of course, they're different. In fact, no public documentation is available for the Netscape Navigator's selection object yet. You can see the properties of the Internet Explorer's selection object in Table 11.16, its methods in Table 11.17, and its events in Table 11.18. You can access this object for a document with the document object's selection property (see Table 9.1).

Tip

Although Netscape has yet to document their selection object, we do know that it contains a getRangeAt method, and I put that method to work in "Using Ranges" later in this chapter.

Table 11.16. The Properties of the selection Object

Property	NS2	IE4	IE5	IE5.5	IE6
`type`		x	x	x	x
	Read-only
	Retrieves the type of selection, as a string. Possible values: `"none"` (there is no selection), `"text"` (the selection is a text selection), or `"control"` (the selection is a control).
`typeDetail`				x	x
	Read-only
	Some nonbrowser applications can provide a custom selections and can set values for this property that indicate the selection type. The implementation of this property in the Internet Explorer returns undefined.
`TextRange`				x	x
	Read-only
	Holds an array of the `TextRange` objects in the selection. An individual text range can be accessed as `selection` `.` `TextRange(` `index` `[` `,` `subIndex` `])` . Here, `index` is an integer or string that indicates the element or collection to get. If this parameter is an integer, this method returns the text range at the given position. If this parameter is a string and there is more than one text range with the `name` or `id` property equal to that string, this method returns all matching elements as an array. The `subIndex` parameter is used when `index` is a string and more than one text range has the same `name` or `id` property, and lets you specify which text range to retrieve.

Table 11.17. The Methods of the selection Object

Method	NS2	IE4	IE5	IE5.5	IE6
`clear`		x	x	x	x
	Returns: Nothing
	Clears the contents of the selection.
	Syntax: `selection` `.clear()` .
`createRange`		x	x	x	x
	Returns: `TextRange` object
	Creates a `TextRange` object from the current text selection. Sytnax: `selection` `.createRange()` .
`CreateRangeCollection`				x	x
	Returns: Collection of `TextRange` objects
	Creates a `TextRange` object collection from the current selectioncurrently, the whole selection is returned in one `TextRange` object. Theoretically, nonbrowser applications can support multiple selections and can return a collection of `TextRange` objects.
`empty`		x	x	x	x
	Returns: Nothing
	Cancels the current selection, sets the selection type to none, and sets the item property to `null` . Sytnax: `selection` `.` `empty()` .

Table 11.18. The Events of the selection Object

Property	NS2	NS3	NS4	NS6	IE3a	IE3b	IE4	IE5	IE5.5	IE6
`ontimeerror`	See Chapter 6.
	In fact, we've already seen how to use the Internet Explorer's `selection` object in Chapter 9 (see Listing 09-07.html on the web site). In that example, you could make a selection using the mouse, and as soon as you did, the selected text appeared in a text field.

Here's the code:

 <HTML>      <HEAD>          <TITLE>Reading Selected Text</TITLE>          <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">              <!--  function getSelected()   {   if (navigator.appName == "Microsoft Internet Explorer") {   document.form1.text1.value = document.selection.createRange().text   }   if(navigator.appName == "Netscape") {   document.form1.text1.value = document.getSelection()   }   }  // -->          </SCRIPT>      </HEAD>      <BODY ONMOUSEUP="getSelected()">          <H1>Reading Selected Text</H1>          Select some of this text!          <BR>          <FORM NAME="form1">              You selected: <INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="text1">          </FORM>      </BODY>  </HTML>

You can see the results in Chapter 9, Figure 9.4, where I'm selecting some text and the code is displaying it.