text elements stay selected when focus moved

[Ted Cohen]

How do I deselect/unselect text using dhtml/dom?

background:
I like my forms to wrap when the user tabs through them, (ie pressing tab on the last element takes you to the first. Pressing backtab on the first takes you to the last).

I have keydown event handlers that I attach to the first and last elements of each form that make that happen. It is a big convenience to the user.

The problem that I have is that when wrapping out of a text field that is selected (and they all are by default when you tab into them) the field stays selected. This makes sense because I "cancel the default action" which would include deselecting the text. I have tried every dom method that I can think of to unselect or deselct the text. I have tried giving focus to itself and to other text fields, I have tried the click() method on it (clicking with a real mouse deselects the text but the dom click method does not.) I have not tested this in other browsers to see how they handle it. If there is a dom select() method, should there not be an unselect method? And whild we are at it, should there not be two parms for select that tell you the first and last character of text to select with the default being select all? If that were the case I could select(0,0) on the element and acheive the needed result.