Firefox Sets Wrong Caret Position Contenteditable with :Before

function setCaret() {
    var el = document.getElementById("editable")
    var range = document.createRange()
    var sel = window.getSelection()
    
    range.setStart(el.childNodes[2], 5)
    range.collapse(true)
    
    sel.removeAllRanges()
    sel.addRange(range)
}

<div id="editable" contenteditable="true">
  text text text<br>text text text<br>text text text<br>
</div>

<button id="button" onclick="setCaret()">focus</button>

setting the caret/cursor position to the end of a contenteditable div

No idea if this will help anyone else out. This does not work cross-browser, but since my issue was specific to FireFox and how it handles range/selection with BR tags, this seemed to solve my issue.

I can basically just set the end of the range before the BR

range.setEndBefore($(el).find('br')[0]);

so in my function I am doing this only for firefox:

 function placeCaretAtEnd(el) {
                    el.focus();
                    if (window.getSelection){
                        if (typeof window.getSelection != "undefined"
                                && typeof document.createRange != "undefined") {
                            var range = document.createRange();
                            range.selectNodeContents(el);
                            range.collapse(false);
                            if ($('#browser-version-check').val() == 'firefox') {
                                range.setEndBefore($(el).find('br')[0]);
                            }
                            var sel = window.getSelection();
                            sel.removeAllRanges();
                            sel.addRange(range);
                        } else if (typeof document.body.createTextRange != "undefined") {
                            var textRange = document.body.createTextRange();
                            textRange.moveToElementText(el);
                            textRange.collapse(false);
                            textRange.select();
                        }
                    }
                }

And here is an updated jsfiddle http://jsfiddle.net/mstefanko/fG5kJ/2/, did not include browser check so this demo will only work correctly in FireFox

Set cursor position on contentEditable div

This is compatible with the standards-based browsers, but will probably fail in IE. I'm providing it as a starting point. IE doesn't support DOM Range.

var editable = document.getElementById('editable'),
    selection, range;

// Populates selection and range variables
var captureSelection = function(e) {
    // Don't capture selection outside editable region
    var isOrContainsAnchor = false,
        isOrContainsFocus = false,
        sel = window.getSelection(),
        parentAnchor = sel.anchorNode,
        parentFocus = sel.focusNode;

    while(parentAnchor && parentAnchor != document.documentElement) {
        if(parentAnchor == editable) {
            isOrContainsAnchor = true;
        }
        parentAnchor = parentAnchor.parentNode;
    }

    while(parentFocus && parentFocus != document.documentElement) {
        if(parentFocus == editable) {
            isOrContainsFocus = true;
        }
        parentFocus = parentFocus.parentNode;
    }

    if(!isOrContainsAnchor || !isOrContainsFocus) {
        return;
    }

    selection = window.getSelection();

    // Get range (standards)
    if(selection.getRangeAt !== undefined) {
        range = selection.getRangeAt(0);

    // Get range (Safari 2)
    } else if(
        document.createRange &&
        selection.anchorNode &&
        selection.anchorOffset &&
        selection.focusNode &&
        selection.focusOffset
    ) {
        range = document.createRange();
        range.setStart(selection.anchorNode, selection.anchorOffset);
        range.setEnd(selection.focusNode, selection.focusOffset);
    } else {
        // Failure here, not handled by the rest of the script.
        // Probably IE or some older browser
    }
};

// Recalculate selection while typing
editable.onkeyup = captureSelection;

// Recalculate selection after clicking/drag-selecting
editable.onmousedown = function(e) {
    editable.className = editable.className + ' selecting';
};
document.onmouseup = function(e) {
    if(editable.className.match(/\sselecting(\s|$)/)) {
        editable.className = editable.className.replace(/ selecting(\s|$)/, '');
        captureSelection();
    }
};

editable.onblur = function(e) {
    var cursorStart = document.createElement('span'),
        collapsed = !!range.collapsed;

    cursorStart.id = 'cursorStart';
    cursorStart.appendChild(document.createTextNode('—'));

    // Insert beginning cursor marker
    range.insertNode(cursorStart);

    // Insert end cursor marker if any text is selected
    if(!collapsed) {
        var cursorEnd = document.createElement('span');
        cursorEnd.id = 'cursorEnd';
        range.collapse();
        range.insertNode(cursorEnd);
    }
};

// Add callbacks to afterFocus to be called after cursor is replaced
// if you like, this would be useful for styling buttons and so on
var afterFocus = [];
editable.onfocus = function(e) {
    // Slight delay will avoid the initial selection
    // (at start or of contents depending on browser) being mistaken
    setTimeout(function() {
        var cursorStart = document.getElementById('cursorStart'),
            cursorEnd = document.getElementById('cursorEnd');

        // Don't do anything if user is creating a new selection
        if(editable.className.match(/\sselecting(\s|$)/)) {
            if(cursorStart) {
                cursorStart.parentNode.removeChild(cursorStart);
            }
            if(cursorEnd) {
                cursorEnd.parentNode.removeChild(cursorEnd);
            }
        } else if(cursorStart) {
            captureSelection();
            var range = document.createRange();

            if(cursorEnd) {
                range.setStartAfter(cursorStart);
                range.setEndBefore(cursorEnd);

                // Delete cursor markers
                cursorStart.parentNode.removeChild(cursorStart);
                cursorEnd.parentNode.removeChild(cursorEnd);

                // Select range
                selection.removeAllRanges();
                selection.addRange(range);
            } else {
                range.selectNode(cursorStart);

                // Select range
                selection.removeAllRanges();
                selection.addRange(range);

                // Delete cursor marker
                document.execCommand('delete', false, null);
            }
        }

        // Call callbacks here
        for(var i = 0; i < afterFocus.length; i++) {
            afterFocus[i]();
        }
        afterFocus = [];

        // Register selection again
        captureSelection();
    }, 10);
};

Caret disappears in Firefox when saving its position with Rangy

Apparently rangy's Selection Save and Restore module can't be used to keep track of the current selection while the user interacts with a contenteditable, like you want.

I digged into it a bit, and the problem is that rangy inserts hidden <span>s as markers, and updates the selection to be after the marker, instead of keeping it inside the #text node the user's editing:

 <div contenteditable>
    #text [This is something I typed <!-- selection is moved from here -->] 
    <span class="rangySelectionBoundary"/>
    <!-- to here -->
 </div>

Firefox has trouble displaying the caret in this scenario (I haven't found a bug about this specific issue, but here's a similar one where the caret is not displayed when the selection is between two <span>s).

Commenting this code out seems to fix the issue with the disappearing caret. It's unclear to me why that code is needed -- it was added before 1.0 in a large commit with its message saying: "Fixes for save/restore problems with control ranges and multiple range selections. Added demos for save/restore and CSS class applier modules." -- so I'm not comfortable to suggest fixing this in rangy (and since it's unmaintained for a few years, I don't have much hope in getting its author's input on this).

So I tried to figure out why you needed this in the first place, to suggest other solutions not involving rangy.saveSelection (for example, rangy's Text Range module provides getSelection().saveCharacterRanges(containerNode) that works without modifying the DOM.

It appears that you have a <div contenteditable> and some "buttons" (<span>s), clicking on which would insert some HTML at the caret position. The problem you were trying to solve was that when the "buttons" were clicked, the selection moved from the contenteditable into the button, and you were unable to detect the insert position.

Instead of storing and restoring the selection, you can instead make the buttons user-select: none - this will keep the caret in the contenteditable.

To test this, I commented out all references to rangy.saveSelection and rangy.restoreSelection and changed the this.$refs.divInput.focus(); call in the "button"'s onclick handler to run only when the contenteditable wasn't already focused by wrapping it in an if (!this.$refs.divInput.contains(document.activeElement)). See how this works in this updated fiddle:

https://jsfiddle.net/fjxsgvm2/

Related Topics