Is there a way to make text unselectable on an HTML page? [duplicate]

I'm building an HTML UI with some text elements, such as tab names, which look bad when selected. Unfortunately, it's very easy for a user to double-click a tab name, which selects it by default in many browsers.

I might be able to solve this with a JavaScript trick (I'd like to see those answers, too) -- but I'm really hoping there's something in CSS/HTML directly that works across all browsers.

Solution 1:

In most browsers, this can be achieved using CSS:

*.unselectable {
   -moz-user-select: -moz-none;
   -khtml-user-select: none;
   -webkit-user-select: none;

   /*
     Introduced in IE 10.
     See http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/msUserSelect/
   */
   -ms-user-select: none;
   user-select: none;
}

For IE < 10 and Opera, you will need to use the unselectable attribute of the element you wish to be unselectable. You can set this using an attribute in HTML:

<div id="foo" unselectable="on" class="unselectable">...</div>

Sadly this property isn't inherited, meaning you have to put an attribute in the start tag of every element inside the <div>. If this is a problem, you could instead use JavaScript to do this recursively for an element's descendants:

function makeUnselectable(node) {
    if (node.nodeType == 1) {
        node.setAttribute("unselectable", "on");
    }
    var child = node.firstChild;
    while (child) {
        makeUnselectable(child);
        child = child.nextSibling;
    }
}

makeUnselectable(document.getElementById("foo"));

Solution 2:

<script type="text/javascript">

/***********************************************
* Disable Text Selection script- © Dynamic Drive DHTML code library (www.dynamicdrive.com)
* This notice MUST stay intact for legal use
* Visit Dynamic Drive at http://www.dynamicdrive.com/ for full source code

***********************************************/


function disableSelection(target){

    if (typeof target.onselectstart!="undefined") //IE route
        target.onselectstart=function(){return false}

    else if (typeof target.style.MozUserSelect!="undefined") //Firefox route
        target.style.MozUserSelect="none"

    else //All other route (ie: Opera)
        target.onmousedown=function(){return false}

    target.style.cursor = "default"
}



//Sample usages
//disableSelection(document.body) //Disable text selection on entire body
//disableSelection(document.getElementById("mydiv")) //Disable text selection on element with id="mydiv"


</script>

EDIT

Code apparently comes from http://www.dynamicdrive.com

Solution 3:

All of the correct CSS variations are:

-webkit-touch-callout: none;
-webkit-user-select: none;
-khtml-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;