Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Just let me select text

aartaka.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 621 posts

Re: Just let me select text

#351

Post by Shorel »

topspin wrote: post #301
zelphirkalt wrote: post #260

I 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 habit. Can't remember when it started. I've caused myself problems doing this. Some PDF datasheets somehow prevent selection. Deeply annoying. You just know there is some fool calling that shot, thinking their protecting something precious.

I started when using Windows 95.

Selecting stuff allowed me to see if the computer had frozen and required a reboot.

Those where the wild times ;/

Re: Just let me select text

#354

Post by jonnat »

muxator wrote: post #307
will_pseudonym wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have a habit of selecting and highlighting text on computer screens, while reading. "There are dozens of us!"

Hi, fellow compulsive selectors! Thanks, I am no longer feeling alone!

The hardest part is to remember not to do it when sharing screens...

Re: Just let me select text

#355

Post by drnick1 »

Copy/paste restrictions are annoying and don't protect the content in any way as you can always get the text from the HTML source.

Lazy people can also just snap a screenshot and give it to an LLM.

Re: Just let me select text

#356

Post by janj »

I can't believe GitHub broke copy/paste for files in a pull request. Now when I highlight a few rows in a file they are unselected and a feedback comment box appears. That used to happen when you click and dragged file line numbers. Breaking find/replace in this way is unacceptable and surprising coming from GitHub.

Re: Just let me select text

#357

Post by kilroy123 »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #260

I 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…

I literally selected your comment as I read it. I do the same.

Re: Just let me select text

#358

Post by lxgr »

will_pseudonym wrote: post #279
zelphirkalt wrote: post #260

I 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…

> I have a habit of selecting and highlighting text on computer screens, while reading. "There are dozens of us!"

I vaguely remember hearing an anecdote about how UX researchers love people that read like that (or at least just use their cursor to keep their position while reading/navigating): Camera-free eye tracking telemetry :)

Re: Just let me select text

#359

Post by hombre_fatal »

socalgal2 wrote: post #197

This is why I prefer web apps over native apps. Web defaults to selectable text and text readable by extensions. I can long press on almost any word and pick "Define" if I don't understand a word (or right click on desktop). Native defaults to unselectable text and no extensions. It's also why I hate Flutter on web. They render text to canvas, suddenly nothing is selectable and so accessibility and definition/transla…

Good point.

Everyone in the comments is talking about websites, but TFA is talking about the iOS Bumble app where it's trivial to unintentionally create unselectable text. e.g. SwiftUI Text components are unselectable by default.

Also, in an iOS app, it's common to decide that interacting with some text should do something like navigate.

IIRC tapping a comment in iOS Apollo (defunct Reddit client) would collapse the comment. If you wanted to make a text selection, the Apollo app developer created a specific text-selection-mode for that. That's how anti-user the norms are on native apps compared to the web.

Often, disabling selection on the web comes from trying to port native app norms to a web app.

Re: Just let me select text

#360

Post by jayknight »

pastage wrote: post #253
cosmojg wrote: post #225

I 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.

OCR seems to be working on recent Android versions not only Google hardware.

Yep, on my S22, I long-press home and can then circle or swipe text to copy, or translate if needed.
Post reply on HN