Are you machine?
Just let me select text
341–350 of 621 posts
Re: Just let me select text
#342On the web you can most of the time select text. You can at least inspect the element and copy the text that way. But in GUI programs very often you cant. There are these labels that cant be selected or copied. Especially frustrating for error messages. In e.g. KDE you actually can copy error messages! So that is great! I was told that under Windows you can do it simply by pressing Ctrl+C when the message box is open. That isn't very discoverable. Anyone know if that was always possible in Windows? Last I used was XP.
Also reminds me of that Jonathan Blow video where he fights the Visual Studio debugger and can't copy a value.
Re: Just let me select text
#343Earlier quoted context omitted.
100% disagree. Not everyone is fluent in every language, and not every website works perfectly with the browser's translator. There will be situations where people will want to translate that ONE word that is actually in a button or tab, and isn't selectable because someone thought they knew better.
isn't selectable because it breaks the UX for keyboard-only users. Has nothing to do with "thinking" anything. It's about testing with accessibility parameters and knowing* what practical problems occur. If you really need to translate ONE WORD, it's not that onerous to type it. You're bringing edge-case hypotheticals to a discussion about practical functionality.
> If you really need to translate ONE WORD, it's not that onerous to type it.
I just spent several weeks traveling in a country where I have no ability to either type or name any of the characters in the alphabet. Yes, it'd be onerous.
Some of the websites I had to deal with also prevented text selection, or presented text as images.
Re: Just let me select text
#344Re: Just let me select text
#345Earlier quoted context omitted.
on Mac/iOS you can just take a screenshot and then select out of the image.
Yup, I've used this for years. See also: not being able to select certain text without clicking a link (say, in a search result).
Alt+click avoids that in Firefox at least. Blew my mind when I learned about that, and I use it way more often than expected.
Re: Just let me select text
#346Screenshot, Copy, New from Clipboard in Preview.app, Tools -> Text Selection, select your text.
Hack the planet.
Re: Just let me select text
#347I must admit, one of my favorite recent-ish Android[1] features is that all text is made selectable in the app switcher using on-device OCR. Regardless of the app[2], you can just swipe up and start selecting text. [1] ...at least on the Google Pixel. [2] ...unless it's a banking app and it blocks permissions for screenshots and similar things.
On iOS you can create a shortcut to push a screenshot through the built in OCR and copy to clipboard. You need to crop beforehand if you don’t want all the text on the screen.
Re: Just let me select text
#348I have a habit of selecting and highlighting text on computer screens, while reading. I have no issues tracking lines usually, but somehow I still select and highlight. Maybe it is just easier to track lines this way. When I see some web page, that prevents this, then that website gets a -50 reputation score out of 100 in my book. So if the site is perfect in every other way (almost no site is) then -50 still makes i…
relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1271/
Re: Just let me select text
#349Earlier quoted context omitted.
I recently read something that stated we've never really had more than 30% of students in the US at a level of mathematical understanding where they can tell that 3/4ths and 0.75 are the same thing, conceptually. I cannot stop thinking about this; it honestly explains so much.
Even harder to understand that 1 part vinegar and 3 parts olive oil isn't 1/3 vinegar.
One cup vinegar and three cups olive oil will give you four cups salad dressing.
Re: Just let me select text
#350I have a habit of selecting and highlighting text on computer screens, while reading. I have no issues tracking lines usually, but somehow I still select and highlight. Maybe it is just easier to track lines this way. When I see some web page, that prevents this, then that website gets a -50 reputation score out of 100 in my book. So if the site is perfect in every other way (almost no site is) then -50 still makes i…
Same here. And so many pages have stupid popups whenever you select something and more often then not you are just triggering weird actions that you don't really want.
That's why NoScript is an absolute necessity to me, even if it takes some time and experience to figure out which script URLs to whitelist to get a usable site.