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Just let me select text

aartaka.me

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Re: Just let me select text

#591

Post by rustystump »

whstl wrote: post #371
rustystump wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point went over the head I suppose.

I meant optimizing every possible usecase. Did you know the button on this very site is not selectable? When you use real semantic html with submit inputs, not buttons, there is text that is not selectable. But it is a button? See what I mean? Draw the line somewhere.

Re: Just let me select text

#592

Post by rustystump »

array_key_first wrote: post #508
rustystump wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You don't have to optimize anything, in fact you do the opposite of optimization. Not making text selectable is extra work. You have to go out of your way to do that. That's the optimization, not the other way around. If you just do things the way the web expects you will be shocked how much stuff magically works. The back button too? Yeah, you don't need logic for that. That should just work right off the rip.

As mentioned in other comment, not all html which looks like a button is a button. It does in fact take extra work to make everything selectable. On native apps it is even harder because the frameworks do not have selection as built in.

To be clear, I HATE that almost everything isn't selectable. It is one of many reasons why I never use mobile apps. Still, somewhere there has to be a line to ship anything.

Re: Just let me select text

#593

Post by matt-attack »

al_borland wrote: post #304
bapak wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for iOS, just not immediately possible. In iOS the new screenshot UI makes it a little easier, before it would need at least 3 taps and a couple of seconds to make it selectable

The OCR in iOS and macOS has been a game changer for me. It seems like such a small thing, but it changes how I work in a big way. If someone is sharing a webpage, I don’t need to ask for the link anymore. Just take a screenshot and click it. I do this multiple times every day.

Agree, I’m constantly taking screenshots of crazy URLs in Zoom meetings. Just a quick screenshot, and click.

Furthermore, the number of apps that make text unelectable is mind-boggling. It’s crazy to me that my common workflow now for selecting text out of an app is just a screenshot it and select right out of the image. It just always works, perfectly.

Re: Just let me select text

#594

Post by matfile »

djtango wrote: post #213
catapart wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And you also can't understand the icon? And the context? And the translations I provided?

If you want to experience the frustration of text not being text, take a look at one of the main train ticket booking websites in China https://www.12306.cn/index/ Plain old text that can be selected is always going to be the most user friendly to non-native speaker users. The question then is on the balance of trade offs which user group experience is the one you want to cater more to, non native speakers or keyboar…

I think we can admit that Chinese always does it in its special way, so it's not really a great example. Not many Chinese people would use their web client to book tickets, the mobile app is much more user-friendly - as long as you have ample knowledge to navigate through the system.

Re: Just let me select text

#596

Post by TuringTest »

yreg wrote: post #556
TuringTest wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The essential case where it makes sense for text to be non-selectable is on objects that can be dragged around. You definitely don't want to get the text selected when the user wanted to move its container. Typically application tabs can be moved or recorded by dragging, and tabs in web pages can't; that would justify a different treatment. But it's because of the different behaviour of the tabs, not the different me…

That makes sense. I would say that at least draggable elements shouldn't be selectable on the web neither. But should non-draggable elements in native apps be selectable?

> should non-draggable elements in native apps be selectable?

Definitely yes. I hate it when I see an error message or a button label and I can't select the text to copy it for searching comments for it on the web.

Re: Just let me select text

#597

Post by mock-possum »

bonoboTP wrote: post #493
indymike wrote: post #306

I 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.

The number of times I had to walk clients through all of the ways that users could trivially defeat whatever ‘copy protection’ we might implement… it was kind of fun to continuously counter each of their suggestions through.

Re: Just let me select text

#598

Post by array_key_first »

rustystump wrote: post #592
array_key_first wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't have to optimize anything, in fact you do the opposite of optimization. Not making text selectable is extra work. You have to go out of your way to do that. That's the optimization, not the other way around. If you just do things the way the web expects you will be shocked how much stuff magically works. The back button too? Yeah, you don't need logic for that. That should just work right off the rip.

As mentioned in other comment, not all html which looks like a button is a button. It does in fact take extra work to make everything selectable. On native apps it is even harder because the frameworks do not have selection as built in. To be clear, I HATE that almost everything isn't selectable. It is one of many reasons why I never use mobile apps. Still, somewhere there has to be a line to ship anything.

I think this is where semantic HTML comes in. Doing other wack or bespoke things is, IMO, not just bad form - it's more work. Just do things the easy way and it'll work.

Re: Just let me select text

#599

Post by andreashaerter »

jayknight wrote: post #372
grues-dinner wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wow. How could I not know but needed this since ages. Thank you!

Re: Just let me select text

#600

Post by 71bw »

abustamam wrote: post #402
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.

> unless it's a banking app and it blocks permissions for screenshots and similar things. Yeah those can fuck all the way off. I'm lucky I have two phones so I can take a photo of my screen and use it for OCR or whatever, but it's ridiculous I have to do that. I understand that for security purposes they don't want to let you take a screenshot in case of a man in the middle or whatever, but let me risk it. Warn me or…

Exactly the reason I still use LSPosed with the disable_flag_secure module on my device.
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