Live data from Hacker News

Don't fuck with paste

github.com

161–170 of 397 posts

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#161
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit cynical isn't it, when the author is clearly being as transparent as possible about what they need and why, which is due to factors outside their control. Of course you're right in a technical sense. They could do whatever they want later. But still let's celebrate and attitude like this rather than criticizing it.

It's not cynical - see what happened to ublock. That kind of mess has happened, and will continue to happen, and should be a factor in what you choose to trust.

What happened to ublock? Are you talking about uBlock origin?

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re absolutely correct though, the parent comment seems to think there are absolute right and wrong answers for UI. I think that’s just not true, a good UI is one that works for your customers.

Of course there are absolute right and wrong answers for UI. Accessibility, minimum text contrast and font size, minimum size for clickable items. Keyboard shortcuts may not be (or may be) one of them, but in fact consistency across applications _is_ considered a hallmark of good UI and every Human Interface Guideline I've ever read, including open source ones such as that from KDE, specify such.

You're being obtuse. Even most of those you list will not reasonably have a fixed, absolute value that is right for all users, all applications, and all situations, and assuming they do is the cause of a lot of awful UI limitations.

(Your user will never need characters to render as single pixels? Try again - sooner or later someone will decide to abuse your spreadsheet as a raytracer and be annoyed they can't make cells single pixel)

And a feeling of consistentency often requires exceptions for specific cases such as the example of "find" where few users want to specifically find what happens to be in the browsers idea of what the document currently contains, but what it logically contains in their model of what it should contain. Consistency means that in an app that dynamically updates a scrollable region, for example, it should still find things in the currently not part of the browser document bits, and so shouldn't use the browsers find in those cases.

Some users might want a shortcut that always does the browsers own find, and there generally ought to be ways to override the app, but consistently acting how the user will want is rarely compatible with absolute rules.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#164
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also not at all clear to me why it "needs to know when you change active tabs".

I just read through the 65LOC source, and it's because it swaps out an active or inactive extension icon based on your active tab. https://github.com/aaronraimist/DontFuckWithPaste/blob/8cb68...

You should have read a few more lines of that source - it also sends an "active" message to the tab, which is what adds and removes the copy/cut/paste event handlers.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#165
Fucking with past is gruesome.

Breaking back button is infuriating.

Yesterday I stumbled upon something even worse : breaking CTRL+F to replace it by a custom search. I know Google Docs / Drive does this but I tolerate it because classical ctrl+f doesn’t even make sense on their apps but here it was on a forum. I knew what a searched was on the displayed page but no, they forced me to search on the entire hundreds pages of the topic.

[/rant] Sorry.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#166
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not cynical - see what happened to ublock. That kind of mess has happened, and will continue to happen, and should be a factor in what you choose to trust.

What happened to ublock? Are you talking about uBlock origin?

The Wiki article has a brief summary of the history, but basically the original author wanted to transfer responsibility for the user-facing maintenance to someone else, who started seeking donations and (I believe) taking payment for "acceptable ads" and the like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UBlock_Origin#uBlock

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#167
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit cynical isn't it, when the author is clearly being as transparent as possible about what they need and why, which is due to factors outside their control. Of course you're right in a technical sense. They could do whatever they want later. But still let's celebrate and attitude like this rather than criticizing it.

It's not cynical - see what happened to ublock. That kind of mess has happened, and will continue to happen, and should be a factor in what you choose to trust.

Wasn't the worst that happened with it that the guy who took over uBlock tried to take credit for it and asked for donations? Not like he could get away with anything outright illegal when everyone knew he was running the project.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#168
post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a bit cynical isn't it, when the author is clearly being as transparent as possible about what they need and why, which is due to factors outside their control. Of course you're right in a technical sense. They could do whatever they want later. But still let's celebrate and attitude like this rather than criticizing it.

This has been used as an attack vector in the past: spot reasonably popular plugin; make author an offer; inject whatever tracking/other malwate stuff new owners want (typically after a delay). So now we'd have to trust the author to do thorough vetting of a potential buyer and also not sell if vetting is inconclusive. And this against an adversary aiming to cheat their way past vetting. Might be a cynical take, but…

>the permissions model created the situation, the author chose a particular path.

perhaps the most reasonable or even only possible path if they wanted their plugin to be able to do what they wanted it to do, which was to keep sites and from messing with your copy and paste functionality - in other words to prevent minor maliciousness.

on edit: sure, to provide the smoothest behavior, but really if it wasn't smooth people would be irritated and not want to use it. I know if I was implementing for myself I would want it to be smooth.

I understand the whole "bad things can be done" perspective, but here for some reason I fall under a "trust but verify" perspective instead.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#169
Has anyone else noticed that copy / paste on Mac OS / Firefox has become unreliable some time in the last 5 years? I don’t know if it’s Firefox or Mac OS but I’ve started finding it copied the wrong thing or ignored a copy command.

Re: Don't fuck with paste

#170

Has anyone else noticed that copy / paste on Mac OS / Firefox has become unreliable some time in the last 5 years? I don’t know if it’s Firefox or Mac OS but I’ve started finding it copied the wrong thing or ignored a copy command.

pretty sure it's macOS. i don't use firefox but id say roughly 4/10 times i try to paste something i just copied, the clipboard is empty and i have to do the whole thing again.
Post reply on HN