How do you scroll to the position of the cursor in a textarea?

From Jonathan Levine's comment, I realized that this answer works for me.

Fiddle Demo

JavaScript

$('#scroll-to-cursor').on('click', function() {    
    $('textarea').focus();
    $.event.trigger({ type : 'keypress' }); // works cross-browser

    // new KeyboardEvent('keypress'); // doesn't work in IE and Safari

    /* var evt = document.createEvent('KeyboardEvent');
    evt.initKeyEvent('keypress', true, true, null, false, false, false, false, 0, 32);
    $textarea.dispatchEvent(evt);

    evt = document.createEvent('KeyboardEvent');
    evt.initKeyEvent('keypress', true, true, null, false, false, false, false, 8, 0);
    $textarea.dispatchEvent(evt); */
});

/*
    To test:
    1) Click somewhere in the textarea to place cursor
    2) Scroll away so cursor isn't visible
    3) Click "Scroll to Cursor" button
*/

Explanation

When the user presses a key, the browser does two things:

1. Places the key in the position after the cursor.
2. Scrolls to that position.

This solution just simulates that (without actually entering any text).

Edit: The old solution isn't standards compliant. initKeyEvent is deprecated. The update only uses the KeyboardEvent() constructor, which is compliant and works in all browsers except IE (Safari is a question mark).

Edit 2: Using $.event.trigger({ type : 'keypress' }); instead of new KeyboardEvent() works just as well, and works in all browsers.

textarea.blur()
textarea.focus()

Does the job.

Example: https://jsfiddle.net/syy25x69/

To select a text in IE see: Set textarea selection in Internet Explorer

Update

In order for this to work, I noticed that the selection must be collapsed. You can restore the selection later if you need to.

// collapse selection here
textarea.blur()
textarea.focus() // this scrolls the textarea
// expand selection here

Another example: https://jsfiddle.net/rk8cL174/

For some weird reason, Chrome only scrolls when there is a caret on the textbox, not when a selection is active, so if you need to scroll to a selection, do this little hack:

  // set the single caret first
  textarea.setSelectionRange(index, index);

  // focus the textarea box so the scroll happens
  textarea.focus();

  // now do the selection
  textarea.setSelectionRange(index, index + x);