How can I prevent text/element selection with cursor drag

Question

I made a paging control and I noticed that while clicking on the buttons it is very easy to accidentally select the individual images and text. Is it possible to prevent this?

To clarify selecting I mean highlighting with the mouse. (Try dragging your mouse from one side of the screen to the other.)

If you try to highlight the text/controls in this grid it can't be selected. How is that done? Link

Answer 1

dragging and selecting both initialize on a mouse down event and update on subsequent mouse moves. When you handle the events to begin dragging, or to follow the mouse, cancel the event's bubbling and override the default browser return:

something like this in your begin dragging mousedown and move handlers-

e=e || window.event; pauseEvent(e); 

function pauseEvent(e){     if(e.stopPropagation) e.stopPropagation();     if(e.preventDefault) e.preventDefault();     e.cancelBubble=true;     e.returnValue=false;     return false; }