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Just let me select text

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Re: Just let me select text

#371

Post by whstl »

rustystump wrote: post #315
whstl wrote: post #43

Earlier 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.

This sounds perhaps a bit rude but it isnt possible to optimize for every possible use case someone somewhere may have. At the end of the day, a line has to be drawn.

It's not about optimizing, it's about not doing additional work just to break the expected behavior of the web platform. So far there was no explanation of where default behavior breaks keyboard usage, for example, only opinions.

Re: Just let me select text

#372

Post by jayknight »

grues-dinner wrote: post #335
sethammons wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, text should be selectable, even when links. The amount of times I've accidentally highlighted instead of clicking? Maybe a couple? The amount of times that frustrated or confused me? Absolutely zero. I want to select the text of a link and copy the text of a link. I want to do this but I run into issues _daily_, esp. on mobile. PagerDuty app, I'm looking at you! Mobile seems to assume that you, in no world ever,…

Being unable to select text out of a link is absolutely infuriating when you want to just copy a piece of it, either because it's a reference number or something, or you want to translate it. Mobile is nearly impossible, and desktop is also fiddly in many cases. Often when translating it's easier to just OCR the area with the dictionary app, which is madness when it started as text.

At least in Firefox, holding down alt while selecting let's you do it within a link without triggering a click event.

Re: Just let me select text

#373

Post by fletchowns »

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 think my text highlighting habit started in the late 90s when the prominent N64 website (what was the name of it??) would have text intentionally "hidden" on the page in the same color as the background, so you had to highlight to see it.

Re: Just let me select text

#374

Post by zelphirkalt »

hatthew wrote: post #348
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…

relevant xkcd https://xkcd.com/1271/

Oh my ... Why didn't I know that one earlier? This stuff is also what I do! Like estimating until where to select, to select half of the text, given that the last line ends at 1/3 of the line width ...

Re: Just let me select text

#375

Post by calmbonsai »

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!"

Some of us were even actively selecting and highlighting that text as we were reading it! ;)

Re: Just let me select text

#377

Post by whstl »

lupire wrote: post #294
Hobadee wrote: post #76

Earlier 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.

My company has dedicated years of engineering time to add custom "copy" buttons next to text that they spent months to make non-selectable.

That's why we don't have flying cars.

Re: Just let me select text

#379

Post by pbasista »

When I encounter a website which does not allow text selection, copying or right click, I usually enable the "Absolute Enable Right Click & Copy" browser extension which removes all of these restrictions.

Such restrictive practices, in my opinion, not only make the website less useful to the user. It also intentionally alienates its users.

I cannot think of a rational reason to do something like that.

Re: Just let me select text

#380

Post by dutzi »

a2dam wrote: post #362
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 here, I even have a fun mini game in my head where I try to make the selection box beginning line directly up with the end on the row below.

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