CSS user-select

By  on  

In my quest to contribute to every Mozilla project possible, I spent some time last Friday making updates to Firefox DevTools.  The JSON Viewer component needed some love so that was first on my list.  While viewing the CSS for the JSON Viewer component, I saw something I hadn't recognized:  CSS user-select:

.heading {
  -moz-user-select: none; /* don't allow selection */
}

After a bit of research, I found that you can control what content can be is selected using CSS:

  .dont-select {
    user-select: none;
  }

  .control-select {
    user-select: none; /* don't select anything */
    user-select: auto; /* let the browser decide */
    user-select: all; /* select everything */
    user-select: text; /* select only text */
    user-select: contain; /* selection contained within element bounds */
  }

When I think about it, there's certainly an argument to be made that you'd prefer some content be selected and copied and others content not, like advertisements or images.

This falls into the family of CSS pointer-events where CSS is used for something other than display.  My first thought is that selection preference should be done via a HTML attribute, like autocomplete and autocorrect are.  Anyways, give the demo a roll!

Recent Features

  • By
    CSS 3D Folding Animation

    Google Plus provides loads of inspiration for front-end developers, especially when it comes to the CSS and JavaScript wonders they create. Last year I duplicated their incredible PhotoStack effect with both MooTools and pure CSS; this time I'm going to duplicate...

  • 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
    HTML5’s window.postMessage API

    One of the little known HTML5 APIs is the window.postMessage API.  window.postMessage allows for sending data messages between two windows/frames across domains.  Essentially window.postMessage acts as cross-domain AJAX without the server shims. Let's take a look at how window.postMessage works and how you...

  • By
    CSS Sprites

    The idea of CSS sprites is pretty genius. For those of you who don't know the idea of a sprite, a sprite is basically multiple graphics compiled into one image. The advantages of using sprites are: Fewer images for the browser to download, which means...

Discussion

  1. MaxArt

    Been using that for a while – obviously, the most common usage is none.
    It’s odd it’s still not been finalized and it’s been used like this for *several years* already, still with vendor prefixes and all.

  2. user-select: contain; seems like it could come in handy and it would be easier to change the values via CSS than everywhere in the markup. Support isn’t too shabby either…

    http://caniuse.com/#search=user-select

    I enjoyed the demos. Thanks for sharing.

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