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Using a Chrome extension to replace characters spanning more than one line in a Facebook status update

I have created a Google Chrome extension to allow users to select text in a component. This works great for most sites. However, Facebook handles its status updates differently. It seems that even though you are filling in what seems to be a single text box, it is actually using a div > div > span > span construct for every single line in this text box. I have no idea why they chose to do this but it makes replacing multiple lines of text much more complex.
Is there a way to select multiple lines (or even contiguous portions of multiple lines) of text in a Facebook status update and replace the data?
The relevant portion of my code looks like this:
function replace_text(language){
let selection = window.getSelection();
string = selection.toString();
/* This section contains code that uses string.replace to replace characters in the string. */
document.execCommand("insertText", false, string);
}
Based on the way my code works now, if I replace text on a single line I have no problems. But, if I replace text that spans multiple lines I end up with a blank unusable input box. Undoubtedly it is because it is removing portions of the html code. How can I fix my code so that the replacement process works properly not only for other sites but also for Facebook?

As of this moment, the one common theme among all status updates (and comments) are that their texts reside within a single or set of span elements with the attribute data-text set to true. So let's target those:
document.querySelectorAll("span[data-text='true']");
For me, I've typed into the status field 3 lines and comment field 1 line of dummy text. So when I execute the above code into the console it returns an array of those four cumulative lines:
>>> (4) [span, span, span, span]
With that array, I can use the Array.prototype.forEach() method to iterate through the spans and replace the innerText:
document.querySelectorAll("span[data-text='true']").forEach(function(element) {
element.innerText = element.innerText.replace('Lorem ipsum','Hello world');
});
However, it is important to note that these changes are being made in the HTML itself and Facebook doesn't store all of its data directly in the HTML. Therefore it can cause undesirable events to occur when you type text into a field, unfocus, change the text in the field, and refocus that field. When you refocus I believe it grabs data of what the text was, before you unfocused that field, from an ulterior source like React's Virtual DOM. To deter it from doing that, the changes either need to be made after clicking the field (real or simulate) or as the user is typing using some sort of MutationObserver (src).

dynamic highlighting using javascript/uiwebview ios

I have some text content displayed on a UIWebView which is plain html. The current paragraph is highlighted in yellow and the user has selected the word 'If the'. (link to image: http://i.stack.imgur.com/GKp9h.png)
1) When the user selects some text on the uiwebiew, how do I perform dynamic highlighting? i.e. as the user is selecting text, what ever text is selected gets highlighted in purple?
For instance, I like the words 'If the' to be highlighted in purple (maybe using window.getSelection() ? ) and that this behaviour is dynamic such that as the user selects subsequent words, these words under selection gets highlighted in purple.
What I am struggling with at the moment is:
1) What event handler (JavaScript or iOS) should I listen to, when the user is selecting some text on the uiwebview? This is before the uimenucontroller opens up.
2) Once, I get the selected text (using window.getSelection(), how do I modify the DOM in a clean efficient way such that the selected text gets highlighted?
I suppose for 2) I cannot directly use style.backgroundColor=<hex code of purple>

There's a very similar question here: How to get selection text from UIWebView?
From the accepted answer there, looks like this might answer your question: http://zaldzbugz.posterous.com/how-to-mark-or-get-the-highlighted-string-ins/ There's a discussion about getting and styling the text selection in a web view.

how to change the text color using jquery or javascript

I have a two items(rows) in the list box
I love to work with jquery
i love to work with javascript
I have textbox and button when I enter love in the text box when I click button i need to loopthrow this list box to find the text love and change that love text color? to yellow.
thanks

first of all, jQuery is javascript, it's a library written in javascript.
So, If I understand your problem, you have 3 interactive elements on your page:
a list box containing a list of words
a text field for the user to enter a word
a button for the user to click when he has written the text.
And you want the option to change color when the user clicks the button.
the code for thsi would be something like this:
$("#mybutton").click(function(){
var text = document.getElementById("mytextinput").value
$("#lstCodelist option").each(function (){
if(this.text()===text)
this.css('color':'yellow');
});
});
this is what happens:
line 1: I define a click handler when the button gets clicked.
line 2: I get the text from inside the textbox, I use getElementById to avoid the overhead of using jQuery for something that simple
line 3: I loop over each of the items in the list.
line 4: if the string in the textbox equals the text inside the option:
line 5, change the css property of the list option.
So no, this is not affecting the text, it only edits the css.

for changing text box color, you can add class to the element
addClass("myClass yourClass");
http://api.jquery.com/addClass/

Stop Jquery from replacing the field

I almost got what I want now. (Cobbled together from code all over the internet.)
But I need to know how to keep my query from being over written.
Example I have a text field. When a word on the dropdown is selected it puts the text in to the form field. If I select another word it replaces that word. What I want it to do is to be able to select as much as I want and no matter how many words I touch it'll keep those unless I go up and backspace or delete them out of the form field.
Here's my code.
http://pastebin.com/1wnAZMNM

One way is to append the new text to the input control instead of replacing its contents, possibly inserting a space character in-between:
$(".myselect").change(function() {
$(".textbox").val($(".textbox").val() + ' ' + $(this).val());
});

How to prevent multiple html selection box displayed on screen?

I have been working on the last bit of my php + ajax based datagrid project.Everything works as I designed except one thing : I cannot stop user opening multiple selection boxes...
Go my research page and use username "ChenxiMao" and password "accedo" to login(without double quotes).
Note that perhaps the images used in this datagrid would not be displayed when page is loaded for the first time(weird, I am trying to fix this, browser incompatibilities, perhaps).
If you double click on one cell in the "CONSULTANT" column, a html select box would be displayed, you can select one consultant to assign him to this task or unassign the consultant from this task. No problem for this.
The problem is : when user leaves this selection box OPEN, he/she can still open another selection box... My jquery code cannot stop people from opening multiple selection boxes.
You can ctrl-U to see the source code on this page, and check the content inside the "gridview-helper.js" for what I have been done.
I want to let user only open a single selection box. When he/she leaves the cell, the selection box should be closed, without changing the html inside...
Puzzled, screwed up for this afternoon...
Thanks for any suggestons in advance!

JavaScript is single-threaded, so you can add a mutex variable and check its value before opening a new select box.
At the top of gridview-helper.js:
var is_choice_visible = false;
In your double-click handler:
$(this).dblclick(function()
{
if (is_choice_visible)
return;
is_choice_visible = true;
...
For your select box, add an onblur handler which sets is_choice_visible back to false and deletes itself.
Unrelated tip: Growing a string in a loop is slow on older versions of Internet Explorer. It's more efficient to append to an array and join the array, e.g.:
var html = ["<select>..."];
for (var i in consultantnames)
{
html.push("<option>...</option>");
}
html.push("</select>");
return html.join("");

Have you tried using the onmouseout event on the cell, and removing the child dropdown box element if mouse out is triggered? Seems that should work.