Text selector issue aside, even though this seems to be the leading narrative here, this user's problem is the language rather than text selection; they only need text selection to work around it. The site in question could simply generate translations, you know, like, make those algos do some work they are good at. Amongst all the other platforms, Airbnb does it, even for your chat with the host, which I often find amusing when chatting with a fellow speaker of my mother tongue via English. Anyhow, the technology is there.
Just let me select text
531–540 of 621 posts
Re: Just let me select text
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are example web pages that prevent this for body text? I feel like I've never come across it before, expect TFA which is making a point... I also can't recall ever coming across a clickable action trigger on every word. Just links that might have some popup action. And I use opt+click to select things within regular links. I'm genuinely curious because it seems like lots of people are agreeing, and this is not a…
substack and some modern ebook apps such as kindle and Wechat books. When you select a popup appears for highlight, leave a comment, or share.
Thanks. I just tried on substack and oof. That's incredibly annoying. I get it now.
Re: Just let me select text
#533I get a kick out of it when a product manager comes suggesting we diable text selection. "oh, you want to disable the single most usable and powerful interoperability feature in our product?" "Yeah. Do we really want people leaving our app with their data?" By leaving, do you mean kicking it off the phone or switching to another app and getting something done? "Oh, yeah, they are just getting something done. But not…
Disabling right click was one of the most common requests from site owners to webmasters back around 2000. They mostly wanted to prevent "Save as..." on the images, but copying article text out was also part of it.
Just above disabling the back button
Re: Just let me select text
#534Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are the one saying it breaks keyboard usage, and still haven't given an example of why and how.
[flagged]
You broke the site guidelines quite badly in this thread, including (such as here) with personal attacks. Could you please review them and stick to them in the future? We'd appreciate it.
Re: Just let me select text
#535Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why would you want to translate "My Account" into another language? When you don't know the language or what "My Account" means? Not everyone speaks English.
And you also can't understand the icon? And the context? And the translations I provided?
Here are the official languages of my country:
- English
- Mandarin
- Malay
- Tamil
Did you provide translations for all of those? If we expand to the immediate vicinity you can also throw in Thai and Vietnamese as well. Plenty of Japanese and Korean people live in Singapore too.
Re: Just let me select text
#536I 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…
Well, yet another compulsive selector here, but: Similarly I get annoyed, if every pixel is some clickable action trigger. This is the worst. It permeates all kind of GUIs. Windows has this mini preview windows that pop up when you're hovering over the apps in the taskbar. Also if you accidentally hover over them , all the windows are minimized except the one previewed. Microsoft has systematically terminated every s…
> Similarly I get annoyed, if every pixel is some clickable action trigger.
Twitter did that, every pixel was reacting to clicks. Selecting text was hard
Re: Just let me select text
#537For me the most annoying text selection limitation is on iOS - there is no "Select All". I have to scroll for a full minute to get a page.
Re: Just let me select text
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
A native Chinese high school graduate is generally expected to know around 3500 characters. A middle school student, 2500-3000. For Kanji the numbers are around 2136 and 1200 and respectively. If you know the language, then you don't need this. But if you're claiming that you can type a random Hanzi or Kanji character you see in an interface without speaking the language, you are either missing something here or not…
It's solvable through the handwriting input, although you do need to know the approximate order and direction of strokes or you will get nowhere. I know roughly zero Chinese characters and use this often-ish.
Most importantly, you also need to find and enable the handwriting IME on your OS; which is... not a reasonable thing to ask of someone who doesn't actually type that language on a daily basis.
Re: Just let me select text
#539I have this saved as a bookmark to fix this. Just press the bookmark and bam! You can select all of the text. I am no JS expert, so do your own review:
javascript:(function(){function%20allowTextSelection(){window.console&&console.log('allowTextSelection');var%20style=document.createElement('style');style.type='text/css';style.innerHTML='*,p,div{user-select:text%20!important;-moz-user-select:text%20!important;-webkit-user-select:text%20!important;}';document.head.appendChild(style);var%20elArray=document.body.getElementsByTagName('*');for(var%20i=0;i-1){el.removeAttribute('disabled');el.onkeydown=el.onkeyup=function(){return%20true};}}}allowTextSelection();})();Re: Just let me select text
#540This shit has been driving me nuts on my phone. Both Signal and this stupid Google Messages app only let you copy the text of entire messages, you can't select specific text to copy. It's either the entire message or nothing at all.