Chrome extension to allow text selection

No script is built into Chrome:

Options>Under the Hood tab>Content settings>JavaScript tab-Tick "do not allow any site to run javascript.

If you need to enable it on a site, either add the site to the exceptions list, or visit the site, then click the javascript icon in the address bar and select "always allow JS on www.xxxx", this will add it to the exceptions list, then refresh the webpage to allow JS to run.

EDIT:

Now it is 2015 and blocking javascript just cripples or breaks most websites so what I do now is i just do a "view page source" in Chrome and copy text from there, a bit harder but at least i can get it.

There is a chrome extension that lets you select text called Selectable. It works on websites like FanFiction, which is what I needed it for.

I don't think either of those answers are helpful. There is now CSS code to block text selection so turning off or blocking javascript is not a help.

So far I have not found an extension for Chrome to help with this, but I did find a bookmarklet:

I have noticed at least one lyrics website has started preventing users from copying lyrics. (As if the lyrics website has a copyright on someone else’s song lyrics!) While there are some good user-experience reasons to disable text selection for certain parts of a web app, but clearly entire the point of a lyrics website is to look up lyrics — and selecting lines can make it easier to read in your browser, or perhaps you want to paste the lyrics into an MP3’s ID3 data (“Get Info” in iTunes).

So screw that.

Here’s a bookmarklet that should allow you to select anything on a web page. It’s not an ultimate solution, but it works for me. Just click it on an offending page.

Reference: http://alanhogan.com/code/text-selection-bookmarklet

You can use bookmarklet for this.

javascript:(function(){function allowTextSelection(){window.console&&console.log('allowTextSelection');var style=document.createElement('style');style.type='text/css';style.innerHTML='*,p,div{user-select:text !important;-moz-user-select:text !important;-webkit-user-select:text !important;}';document.head.appendChild(style);var elArray=document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');for(var i=0;i<elArray.length;i++){var el=elArray[i];el.onselectstart=el.ondragstart=el.ondrag=el.oncontextmenu=el.onmousedown=el.onmouseup=function(){return true};if(el instanceof HTMLInputElement&&['text','password','email','number','tel','url'].indexOf(el.type.toLowerCase())>-1){el.removeAttribute('disabled');el.onkeydown=el.onkeyup=function(){return true};}}}allowTextSelection();})();

Source

Try disabling the CSS user-select property

If you are not allowed to select text from a particular website, chances are they are using CSS to disable text selection using the property user-select.

Using the inspect element window, locate this property on the CSS. If you find it, untick it to disable it.

If you try disabling JavaScript, as some people suggest, some websites may not open at all, so avoid doing that if you can.

If you need to change this property every time you access a website, consider using the Chrome Stylebot extension as an alternative.

Cheers.