execCommand on Range

Question

I've been calling execCommand on the document to make the selected text bold or to set its color. But recently I need to use execCommand on a certain range and not the selected text.

Can I do this and if so how?

Answer 1

You can, but it needs to be the selection. So in other words, do the following:

• Store the current selection
• Make a new selection based on the Range
• Perform the execCommand
• Restore the previous selection

You can create a selection from ranges (non-IE browsers) with the following:

 var selection = window.getSelection();
 selection.removeAllRanges();
 selection.addRange(range);

With IE, you can directly execute execCommand on TextRange objects, so this whole process won't be necessary.