I am looking to do the following

• Disallow text selection inside of an input element
• Do not show the cursor carrot inside of an input

i cannot simply blur the input on click, focus must remain in the input. There is probably a way to do this in just IE, i would of course rather have a cross browser solution but ill settle for IE (or FF) only solution.

Here is a demo page where you can see why i might need this functionality:

http://programmingdrunk.com/current-projects/dropdownReplacement/

if you click on the dropdowns in the first row on page, you will see the carrot inside the dropdown which looks funny. (this wont happen in chrome, but will in FF or IE)