It's not only text. Images and videos are obfuscated to make copy/downloading harder.
Just let me select text
291–300 of 621 posts
Re: Just let me select text
#292Besides disabling copying, another annoying practice is when websites hijack the clipboard to add copyright info to copied text fragments. I can barely understand showing a pop-up to request source attribution when copying content online. However, actively interfering with things people copy is a big no-no to me. It creates a usability problem where there was none, and probably does little to discourage plagiarism.
I think iBook has that ”feature” and that made me, along the ever present store, abandon it as a reader. And it’s a nice reader.
Re: Just let me select text
#293One of many examples of the way that UI has backslid in modern times.
I swear, sometimes I think we peaked sometime in the TN3270 days
Re: Just let me select text
#294As 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…
Real-world example I use nearly daily: Selecting the nav header that's the ticket number in our ticketing system. I copy-paste the number elsewhere. Of course there are many other bad design decisions that go into requiring me to do this, but it's still a real example of why all text should be selectable.
My company has dedicated years of engineering time to add custom "copy" buttons next to text that they spent months to make non-selectable.
Re: Just let me select text
#295Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but the joke is moot, because on the web, you can't really make text non-selectable (you can try, but it can be defeated extremely easily). In an app, undoing that is pretty much impossible (or at least, above my pay grade). This is one of a million reasons why apps are so bad.
"Apps" of this sort are absolutely "on the web", and generally use browser engines to display the content. The real distinction IMO is between using a locked-down mobile interface vs. a full browser on a computer with an OS and UI intended to let you have that control.
I can pretty much guarantee that an app like Bumble is not a webview wrapper.
Re: Just let me select text
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
Real-world example I use nearly daily: Selecting the nav header that's the ticket number in our ticketing system. I copy-paste the number elsewhere. Of course there are many other bad design decisions that go into requiring me to do this, but it's still a real example of why all text should be selectable.
Then all those nav headers need to have a little button on the side to open a floating div with copy-pasteable content. Or, if needed - different versions of copy-pasteable content (as a command line for copy-pasting into the terminal, json, etc.) This is a standard UI convention used by all internal dev tools at my current company.
Oh don't worry, it's a tooltip, so you can see it, but not copy it.
Re: Just let me select text
#297Just a small note, the ocr stuff they needed to do to get the translation is a step further than needed, the screenshot could just be uploaded directly into the google translate app.
Re: Just let me select text
#298Earlier quoted context omitted.
One of my ticks is repeatedly highlighting text over and over. I blame years of drone splitting. It also helps me focus on reading.
What is drone splitting?
In StarCraft you can give individual orders to your initial group of workers (drones) instead of giving them one big group order. It takes only a few seconds for your drones to move to the resources so you only have a few seconds to click and give multiple orders.
Re: Just let me select text
#299For websites and webpages, at least on desktop, you can usually do something about it. But for apps... good luck finding a solution. At least Twitter, which I use the most, lets you select text. The one I hate the most is Spotify. Copying the name of a song or an artist is something I do regularly, yet there’s no way to do it in the app.
Like that one time the Spotify algorithm found a cool band. Only problem was that they were Chinese. If the name of a band uses some language that's based on some form of the latin alphabet, I can always type something similar to the name and a search engine will find it for me. With Chinese, no chance at all.
Re: Just let me select text
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is drone splitting?
Someone played EVE Online.