Disabling user selection in UIWebView

Question

I have an app where I load content to a UIWebView and present this. I cannot disable user interaction completely because I want the user to be able to click links. I just need to disable user selection. I found somewhere in the Internets that you can use:

document.body.style.webkitUserSelect='none';

I tried inserting this as

[self.contentView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:@"document.body.style.webkitUserSelect='none';"]; 

in webViewDidFinishLoad:

However, it does not work. I am still able to select and copy text inside the WebView.

Any Ideas what might be going wrong?

Update: This only seems to happen starting with iOS 4.3

Answer 1

Here are a few ways to disable selection:

Add the following to your mobile web documents

<style type="text/css">
* {
    -webkit-touch-callout: none;
    -webkit-user-select: none; /* Disable selection/copy in UIWebView */
}
</style>

Programmatically load the following Javascript code:

NSString * jsCallBack = @"window.getSelection().removeAllRanges();";    
[webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:jsCallBack];

Disable the Copy / Paste user menu:

- (BOOL)canPerformAction:(SEL)action withSender:(id)sender 
{    
    if (action == @selector(copy:) ||
        action == @selector(paste:)||
        action == @selector(cut:)) 
    {
        return _copyCutAndPasteEnabled;
    }
    return [super canPerformAction:action withSender:sender];
}