What is the best way to prevent highlighting of text when clicking on its containing div in javascript?

In (Mozilla, Firefox, Camino, Safari, Google Chrome) you can use this:

div.noSelect {
  -moz-user-select: none; /* mozilla browsers */
  -khtml-user-select: none; /* webkit browsers */
}

For IE there is no CSS option, but you can capture the ondragstart event, and return false;

Update

Browser support for this property has expanded since 2008.

div.noSelect {
  -webkit-user-select: none;  /* Chrome all / Safari all */
  -moz-user-select: none;     /* Firefox all */
  -ms-user-select: none;      /* IE 10+ */
}

https://css-tricks.com/almanac/properties/u/user-select/

You could use this CSS to simply hide the selection color (not supported by IE):

#id::-moz-selection {
  background: transparent;
}

#id::selection {
  background: transparent;
}