Html – Disable Blue Highlight when Touch/Press object with Cursor:Pointer

The proprietary variations of user-select will work in most modern browsers:

*.unselectable {
   -moz-user-select: -moz-none;
   -khtml-user-select: none;
   -webkit-user-select: none;

   /*
     Introduced in IE 10.
     See http://ie.microsoft.com/testdrive/HTML5/msUserSelect/
   */
   -ms-user-select: none;
   user-select: none;
}

For IE < 10 and Opera, you will need to use the unselectable attribute of the element you wish to be unselectable. You can set this using an attribute in HTML:

<div id="foo" unselectable="on" class="unselectable">...</div>

Sadly this property isn't inherited, meaning you have to put an attribute in the start tag of every element inside the <div>. If this is a problem, you could instead use JavaScript to do this recursively for an element's descendants:

function makeUnselectable(node) {
    if (node.nodeType == 1) {
        node.setAttribute("unselectable", "on");
    }
    var child = node.firstChild;
    while (child) {
        makeUnselectable(child);
        child = child.nextSibling;
    }
}

makeUnselectable(document.getElementById("foo"));

IE's unselectable expando property does this for you automatically; it isn't inherited. For other browsers, use an extra CSS rule. Assuming the following HTML:

<div class="unselectable" unselectable="on">
    Some unselectable text
    <div>Some selectable text</div>
    Some more unselectable text
</div>

Use the following CSS. This defines an extra rule specifically enabling text selection for descendants of unselectable elements:

*.unselectable {
   -moz-user-select: -moz-none;
   -khtml-user-select: none;
   -webkit-user-select: none;
   -o-user-select: none;
   user-select: none;
}

*.unselectable * {
   -moz-user-select: text;
   -khtml-user-select: text;
   -webkit-user-select: text;
   -o-user-select: text;
   user-select: text;
}