contenteditable and non button elements

Question

I can easily do execcommand on a contenteditable selection if using a button. However using any other element fails.

http://jsbin.com/atike/edit

Why is this and

Answer 1

You could save the selection by using the mousedown event on the element being used instead of a button and restore it again after focussing the editable element in the click event.

I've modified the example code: http://jsbin.com/atike/40/edit. Here's the code:

function saveSelection() {
    if (window.getSelection) {
        sel = window.getSelection();
        if (sel.getRangeAt && sel.rangeCount) {
            var ranges = [];
            for (var i = 0, len = sel.rangeCount; i < len; ++i) {
                ranges.push(sel.getRangeAt(i));
            }
            return ranges;
        }
    } else if (document.selection && document.selection.createRange) {
        return document.selection.createRange();
    }
    return null;
}

function restoreSelection(savedSel) {
    if (savedSel) {
        if (window.getSelection) {
            sel = window.getSelection();
            sel.removeAllRanges();
            for (var i = 0, len = savedSel.length; i < len; ++i) {
                sel.addRange(savedSel[i]);
            }
        } else if (document.selection && savedSel.select) {
            savedSel.select();
        }
    }
}

$(function() {
  var savedSel;

  $('.bold').mousedown(function () {
    savedSel = saveSelection();
  });

  $('.bold').click(function () {
    $('#hello').focus();
    if (savedSel) {
      restoreSelection(savedSel);
    }
    document.execCommand("bold", false, null);    
  });
});