Learning jQuery

jQuery's .select() method is not a super popular or commonly used jQuery event method, but it can be very useful. A select event occurs when text within a text area or text input field is selected (highlighted) by a user using the cursor. Basically, the only time you would use it is if you want a particular effect to happen or code to change as a direct result of a user selecting text written, either text by themselves or text that exists as the result of it being assigned the value for the elements in question, within a text area or text input field.

What follows is a look at the basic syntax, which is similar to that of many other jQuery event methods:

$(selector).select(function)

You can choose to attach a function to the select event, or you can choose to leave the parameter parentheses blank. To see what it might look like with a function attached, check out the code snippet example below.

To better understand how this jQuery event method works, we're going to show you how you would use it in a realistic context. In the example below, the code demonstrates how the .select() method can be used to trigger an alert message on your page:

$("textarea").select(fucntion(){
   alert("You highlighted some text -- good job!");
})

So in the example above, when any text from within a text area is selected or highlighted (whether it be text entered by the user or text that was already there), an alert will pop up on the page that says "You highlighted some text -- good job!" It's important to remember that because of the way this code is written, this alert will appear each and every time that text is selected or highlighted within any text area element on the page. If you'd like for that to be different, then be sure to customize the code to suit the needs of your own project.