EditContext: characterBounds() method

Limited availability

This feature is not Baseline because it does not work in some of the most widely-used browsers.

Experimental: This is an experimental technology
Check the Browser compatibility table carefully before using this in production.

The characterBounds() method of the EditContext interface returns an Array containing the list of bounding rectangles for the characters in the EditContext object.

The position and size of the characters in an EditContext object is used by the operating system to correctly position platform-specific editing-related UI surfaces such as an Input Method Editor (IME) window when needed. This is especially important in situations where the operating system can't automatically detect the position and size of the characters, such as when rendering text in a <canvas> element.

Web developers will most likely be interested in using the characterboundsupdate event together with the EditContext.updateCharacterBounds() method to update the character bounds when the operating system indicates that it requires information about the position and size of the characters.

The characterBounds() method returns the list of character bounds that were last updated with updateCharacterBounds(). The list doesn't contain an item for every character in the EditContext object, only for the characters that were updated with updateCharacterBounds(). To know where the characters are located in the EditContext object, use the EditContext.characterBoundsRangeStart property.

Syntax

js
characterBounds()

Return value

An Array containing DOMRect objects.

Specifications

Specification
EditContext API
# dom-editcontext-characterbounds

Browser compatibility

Report problems with this compatibility data on GitHub
desktopmobile
Chrome
Edge
Firefox
Opera
Safari
Chrome Android
Firefox for Android
Opera Android
Safari on iOS
Samsung Internet
WebView Android
WebView on iOS
characterBounds
Experimental

Legend

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Full support
Full support
No support
No support
Experimental. Expect behavior to change in the future.

See also