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

411–420 of 621 posts

Re: Just let me select text

#411

Post by andai »

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.

This includes not just images, but text which is part of the app's UI, and not otherwise selectable, right? If so, that is pretty funny. Running advanced machine learning models to extract the data that we already have (but won't let the user access normally).

Re: Just let me select text

#412

Post by brongondwana »

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!"

Join the club, we have compulsive mouse habits.

(am a member of this select club)

Re: Just let me select text

#413

Post by kulahan »

yorwba wrote: post #403
kulahan wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure: https://www.nagb.gov/naep/mathematics.html Additionally: https://www.nationsreportcard.gov/ 22% of 12th graders are considered proficient in Math. This means: NAEP Basic - Apply single-step percentages to solve real-world problems. NAEP Proficient - Analyze information to solve real-world problems with proportional reasoning. NAEP Advanced - Solve multi-step, real-world problems using percentages.

Specifically, for 12th-grade math, the cut scores are 141/300 for NAEP Basic, 176/300 for NAEP Proficient and 216/300 for NAEP Advanced. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/mathematics/achieve.as... The score is an aggregate over questions testing many different skills, so while getting a low score suggests that a student is less skilled, it doesn't immediately tell you which skills they're bad at in particular. So…

I should've clarified it was an example, not that literally that one highly particular thing is what all American students are bad at, or that knowing .75 == 3/4ths == 75% somehow causally affects your future or whatever.

Re: Just let me select text

#414

Post by rotis »

Reminds me of one of the stupidest hacks I discovered (In my mind). In one of my previous companies we had many similar Lotus Notes databases and one of them didn't allow to copy text from it. You could paste, I'm sure. You could select the text. But not copy. Turns out you could DRAG the selected text to other window. This copied the text over. So being able to highlight a text may mean you can indeed copy it ;)

Re: Just let me select text

#415

Post by dfxm12 »

tredre3 wrote: post #263
moralestapia wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Being unable to get the joke here implies that someone is obtuse or unable to grasp social cues (ie autism-adjacent), not that they are stupid. Which is further confirmed by the fact that HN's audience skews towards the former and away from the latter.

I wouldn't make assumptions. There are a lot of people here...

Re: Just let me select text

#416

Post by rammer »

Bumble nor any dating app like that doesn't want users copying and pasting the profile info externally as a matter of business.

Multiple reasons Could be because they don't want a record of that elsewhere. Like teens sharing with friends.

Don't want people copy pasting text to use on other profiles. So using someone else's account profile story.

The

Re: Just let me select text

#417

Post by empyrrhicist »

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'm doing it right now.

Re: Just let me select text

#419

Post by yreg »

whstl wrote: post #278
throwaway0123_5 wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Firefox my tabs have text, and I frequently rearrange tabs with my cursor. I think this is a pretty common usage pattern (I do it on a daily basis). It would be an enormous pain if most of the area on the tab turned my arrow cursor into an I-beam cursor that I couldn't move the tab with. I checked Chrome and it looks like the tabs work the same way. While having the text in the tabs is very useful to know what is…

The example I am answering to was prefaced as being by a web dev, so I am only talking about websites here. For Apps agree, as I can install different ones and pick the language regardless of where I am traveling, etc. And page titles (that go on browser tabs) rarely need selection/translation.

Why do you make a difference between tabs in a native app and in a web app? The optimal UX should be the same.

Re: Just let me select text

#420

Post by cryptonector »

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…

If you do it constantly then it's OCD :) but you don't need OCD for clicking and highlighting text to be a legitimate thing that readers do. So 100% this kind of website you're talking about is utter crap. -50 is not enough.
Post reply on HN