You can get the selected text of a textarea using pure javascript. The below example shows how to achieve it. The example below tested with chrome, mozilla and ie with the following specified versions.Chrome version 38.0.2125.111, ie version 11.0.9600, mozilla version 32.0.3
Example:
<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getSelectedText()
{
var txtArea = document.getElementById("textarea1");
var selectedText;
if (txtArea.selectionStart != undefined)
{
var startPosition = txtArea.selectionStart;
var endPosition = txtArea.selectionEnd;
selectedText = txtArea.value.substring(startPosition, endPosition);
}
alert("You selected :" + selectedText);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<textarea id="textarea1" onselect="getSelectedText()" cols="75" rows="30">
</textarea>
</body>
</html>
The screen will look like the following.
Figure 1
You can download the source code from here.
