Scroll to Element within CKEditor

By  on  

CKEditor is the outstanding WYSIWYG editor we use on the Mozilla Developer Network.  We have many custom plugins and we do everything we can to make writing easy for contributors.  One trick I just picked up was skipping to an element within the editor by ID and setting the cursor focus within that element.  Here's how!

The JavaScript

You'll start by scrolling the element into view within CKEditor:

var element = editor.document.getById('someHeading');
var range;

if(element) {
    element.scrollIntoView();

    // Thank you S/O
    // http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16835365/set-cursor-to-specific-position-in-ckeditor
    range = editor.createRange();
    range.moveToPosition(element, CKEDITOR.POSITION_AFTER_START);
    editor.getSelection().selectRanges([range]);
}

With the element in view, you'll attempt to insert the cursor at the beginning of the element using a Range.

Firefox will actually insert the cursor for you but Chrome wont, so the Range step is necessary.

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Cube

    CSS cubes really showcase what CSS has become over the years, evolving from simple color and dimension directives to a language capable of creating deep, creative visuals.  Add animation and you've got something really neat.  Unfortunately each CSS cube tutorial I've read is a bit...

  • By
    CSS Gradients

    With CSS border-radius, I showed you how CSS can bridge the gap between design and development by adding rounded corners to elements.  CSS gradients are another step in that direction.  Now that CSS gradients are supported in Internet Explorer 8+, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools 1.3 Browser Object

    MooTools 1.3 was just released and one of the big additions is the Browser object.  The Browser object is very helpful in that not only do you get information about browser type and browser versions, you can gain information about the user's OS, browser plugins, and...

  • By
    Shake Things Up Using jQuery UI’s Shake Effect

    Yesterday I created a tutorial showing you how you can shake an element using Fx.Shake, a MooTools component written by Aaron Newton. It turns out that jQuery UI also has a shake effect which can draw attention to an element. The XHTML Exactly the same as...

Discussion

  1. Instead of

    range.setStart(element, 0);
    range.setEnd(element, 0);
    

    you can simply use

    range.moveToPosition( element, CKEDITOR.POSITION_AFTER_START );
    
  2. Ahmad Raza Cheema

    This will work for sure.

    CKeditor.config.startupFocus = 'end';

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!