[RESOLVED] Get the position of the cursor in a textarea

Hi,
I've done the following code to place formatting tags around code in a textarea. It works perfect in Firefox but in IE it only works if some text is selected.

How do I get the positon of the cursor if no text is selected?

HTML Code:

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<script type="text/javascript">
//<![CDATA[
 
  function ApplySimpleTag(tagCode) {
    var selText = "";
    var beforeText = "";
    var afterText = "";
    var newSelStart = 0;
    var commentBox = objById('pbertie_CommentBox');
    var StartTag = '[' + tagCode + ']';
    var EndTag = '[/' + tagCode + ']';
   
    if (commentBox.selectionStart) {
      // check whether some text is selected in the textarea
     
      beforeText = commentBox.value.substring(0, commentBox.selectionStart);
      afterText = commentBox.value.substring(commentBox.selectionEnd);
      newSelStart = commentBox.selectionStart + StartTag.length;
      if (commentBox.selectionStart != commentBox.selectionEnd) {
        selText = commentBox.value.substring(commentBox.selectionStart, commentBox.selectionEnd);
      }
      commentBox.value = beforeText + StartTag + selText + EndTag + afterText;
     
      if(commentBox.setSelectionRange) {
          commentBox.setSelectionRange(newSelStart, newSelStart + selText.length);
      }
      else if (commentBox.createTextRange) {
        var selRange = commentBox.createTextRange();
        selRange.collapse(true);
        selRange.moveStart("character", newSelStart);
        selRange.moveEnd("character", selText.length);
        selRange.select();
      }
     
    }
    else {
      var textRange = document.selection.createRange();
     
      if (textRange.parentElement() === commentBox) { // Fails this check is the selected length is zero.
        textRange.text = StartTag + textRange.text + EndTag;
      }
    }
   
    commentBox.focus();
  }
// ]]>
</script>
<textarea class="pbertie_EditorTextarea" id="pbertie_CommentBox"></textarea>

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Inserting this one line made it work properly for me:

Code:

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    else {
      commentBox.focus();
      var textRange = document.selection.createRange();

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From https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM...extAreaElement

Quote:

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selectionStart

The index of the beginning of selected text. [HTML5] If no text is selected, contains the index of the character that follows the input cursor. On being set, the control behaves as if setSelectionRange() had been called with this as the first argument, and selectionEnd as the second argument.

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This is also listed in the HTML5 spec at http://www.w3.org/TR/html5/associati...selectionstart.

Quote:

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The selectionStart attribute must, on getting, return the offset (in logical order) to the character that immediately follows the start of the selection. If there is no selection, then it must return the offset (in logical order) to the character that immediately follows the text entry cursor.

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Not sure how many browsers implement this yet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by SambaNeko

Inserting this one line made it work properly for me:

Code:

---

    else {
      commentBox.focus();
      var textRange = document.selection.createRange();

---

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Cheers thats sorted it. I did see a post mentioning something similar about using the onmousedown event but didn't try it. Bit weird how the focus doesn't matter when there's at least one character selected :confused: