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Just let me select text

aartaka.me

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Re: Just let me select text

#211

Post by Unai »

bobbylarrybobby wrote: post #114
catapart wrote: post #21

As a web dev, I fully agree with this, but with a huge exception: clickable text. Anything that is meant to be read as content should absolutely, without fail, be selectable and copyable (assuming appropriate permissions). But stuff like tab headers, buttons, or even text-sparse tiles - things meant for the user to click on - can, and usually should , prevent text selection. It is super annoying to be clicking back a…

It's always bothered me that links on webpages are single click to open. They should require double clicking to open (like just about everything else on a computer) and single click should be used to start selecting text, like everywhere else on a computer.

Selecting a link's text is secondary to opening it, so it makes sense that it takes a less direct action to do it. At least on Windows, just hold the "ALT" key to select without a click registering; not so bad, although intuition tells me most people don't know about it.

Re: Just let me select text

#212

Post by iefbr14 »

On my system I use a little script coupled to a key that lets you select a graphical area with text in it and it converts it into real text that is placed in the clipboard:

#!/usr/bin/bash

maim -us | tesseract --dpi 145 -l eng - - | xsel -bi

[[ "$(xsel -ob)" ]] || (notify-send "No text found"; ohno)

You wil have to install maim, tesseract and xsel for it to work.

Edit: you can leave out the ohno which is just an audible alarm on my system

Re: Just let me select text

#213

Post by djtango »

catapart wrote: post #85
Ghoelian wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why would you want to translate "My Account" into another language? When you don't know the language or what "My Account" means? Not everyone speaks English.

And you also can't understand the icon? And the context? And the translations I provided?

If you want to experience the frustration of text not being text, take a look at one of the main train ticket booking websites in China https://www.12306.cn/index/

Plain old text that can be selected is always going to be the most user friendly to non-native speaker users.

The question then is on the balance of trade offs which user group experience is the one you want to cater more to, non native speakers or keyboard-only users.

Edit: I love how one of the icons is 票 - perfectly self explanatory to Chinese speakers. Good luck if you don't speak Chinese which goes to show that icons are cultural to some degree

Re: Just let me select text

#214

Post by homebrewer »

whstl wrote: post #127
catapart wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even understand it; I just can recognize a character and type it in. The only time I have to do so is in looking at poorly designed firmware sites and stuff like that, but I manage when the developers do not accomodate for me. But that's not what the topic is. The topic is HOW developers should accomodate users. And I'm simply taking the stance that preventing user selectability is a lesser evil in specific c…

A native Chinese high school graduate is generally expected to know around 3500 characters. A middle school student, 2500-3000. For Kanji the numbers are around 2136 and 1200 and respectively. If you know the language, then you don't need this. But if you're claiming that you can type a random Hanzi or Kanji character you see in an interface without speaking the language, you are either missing something here or not…

It's solvable through the handwriting input, although you do need to know the approximate order and direction of strokes or you will get nowhere. I know roughly zero Chinese characters and use this often-ish.

Re: Just let me select text

#215

Post by remus »

The instagram app is infuriating for this. What possible reason is there for not allowing the user to select text in captions? I just want to put it into google translate so I can get a non-garbage translation of foreign language captions, or look something up on wikipedia, or paste a name in to my contacts, or...

So the workaround on android is to long press the bottom bar, send the screen off to gemini to OCR it, it'll recognise it's foreign language and then translate it for you. What a complete waste of time! You've got these remarkable LLM capabilities at your fingertips, and we're forced to burn energy working around these asinine restrictions for something as simple, as universal and as well understood as copying text.

Re: Just let me select text

#217

Post by underlipton »

csmantle wrote: post #72
catapart wrote: post #21

As a web dev, I fully agree with this, but with a huge exception: clickable text. Anything that is meant to be read as content should absolutely, without fail, be selectable and copyable (assuming appropriate permissions). But stuff like tab headers, buttons, or even text-sparse tiles - things meant for the user to click on - can, and usually should , prevent text selection. It is super annoying to be clicking back a…

I sometimes shop on Japanese webstores for CDs and merch. Many of these sites are actually where natives buy stuff, so few to no translations are available there. It's a routine for me to copy the Japanese on the nav bar to a translator, then get a list like "Cart Orders Account Help". Another example for buttons. Assuming I don't speak Chinese, how could I know what "下单" and "返回" mean without copy-pasting them into…

Copy-paste obviously makes things easier, but it should be noted that many translate tools let you draw characters these days, and many OCR services can read Chinese characters. But I agree that those are annoying extra steps.

Re: Just let me select text

#218

Post by Koffiepoeder »

encom wrote: post #19
NoraCodes wrote: post #16

Given that this page has the following styles which aren't applied anywhere else on the blog: body { -webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-touch-callout: none; -moz-user-select: none; -ms-user-select: none; user-select: none; } I think it's safe to assume that being unable to select text on this page is not unintentional, as several comments here assume, nor "ironic", but an intentional effort to demonstrate how annoyin…

In uBlock: *##html, body, body *:style(user-select: auto !important)

Wouldn't recommend applying this _everywhere_; the `body *` selector may have a significant performance impact on some pages.

Re: Just let me select text

#219

Post by jasonlotito »

moralestapia wrote: post #150
NoraCodes wrote: post #16

Given that this page has the following styles which aren't applied anywhere else on the blog: body { -webkit-user-select: none; -webkit-touch-callout: none; -moz-user-select: none; -ms-user-select: none; user-select: none; } I think it's safe to assume that being unable to select text on this page is not unintentional, as several comments here assume, nor "ironic", but an intentional effort to demonstrate how annoyin…

Are people these days so dense (i.e. stupid) they couldn't figure out it was a joke by the author?

[flagged]

Re: Just let me select text

#220

Post by noisy_boy »

Cigna webpage used to show the submission id in selectable text at the end of claim submission. Then they did a dark pattern and now the submission id is no longer selectable - god forbid the convenience of being able to copy/paste it in my invoice filename. It is like these companies are in a race to see who can embrace the cuntiest practices.
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