How to get the coordinates of the end of selected text with javascript?

Question

My problem is similar to this, but I need a way to get the coordinates of the right side of the selection with Javascript in Firefox. I made a small example to show what I mean:

The code I got from the other post is the following:

var range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
var dummy = document.createElement("span");
range.insertNode(dummy);
var box = document.getBoxObjectFor(dummy);
var x = box.x, y = box.y;
dummy.parentNode.removeChild(dummy);

This gives me the coordinates of the beginning of the selection. Is there any way to retrieve the coordinates of the end of the selection?

Heptavalent

Answer 1

Yes. That bit's quite simple: you just need to call collapse(false) on the Range obtained from the selection. Be aware that document.getBoxObjectFor() has now been removed from Mozilla, so you need the dummy element's getBoundingClientRect() method instead:

var range = window.getSelection().getRangeAt(0);
range.collapse(false);
var dummy = document.createElement("span");
range.insertNode(dummy);
var rect = dummy.getBoundingClientRect();
var x = rect.left, y = rect.top;
dummy.parentNode.removeChild(dummy);

Cantaloupe

+1 for being 3 seconds faster. I didn't know getBoxObjectFor() had already been removed. – Nominee

I remembered that because a few months ago MooTools broke because it was detecting Mozilla using a sniff for getBoxObjectFor() (a method that it never used, as far as I know). – Cantaloupe

collapse(false) is exactly what I was searching for. Thank you so much. You helped me a lot. – Heptavalent

Answer 2

var r = range.cloneRange();
r.collapse(false); // collapses range clone to end of original range
r.insertNode(dummy);
// document.getBoxObjectFor(dummy), etc.

Hillier