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

The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

blog.jgc.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 179 posts

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#71

Post by devcpp »

scrumper wrote: post #53
hartror wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

> habitual selectors Ah, my condition has a name. All it needs now is a support group. My case become terminal when I discovered three finger drag on OSX. HN is a particularly good site to do it on because of the little lines and gaps that appear between selected blocks of comments. You can get a very satisfying 'pop' of a multi-comment selection springing from a single one if you move your mouse just a bit while dra…

Great, we have our first theoretician. Now we do need some sort of organizational structure for advocacy.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#72

Post by illuminate »

scrumper wrote: post #53
hartror wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

> habitual selectors Ah, my condition has a name. All it needs now is a support group. My case become terminal when I discovered three finger drag on OSX. HN is a particularly good site to do it on because of the little lines and gaps that appear between selected blocks of comments. You can get a very satisfying 'pop' of a multi-comment selection springing from a single one if you move your mouse just a bit while dra…

"Curious... Why are you selecting? Is it to assist in reading, or some other reason?"

Sometimes unconscious compulsion, otherwise to put together a quote in the context of an existing thread.

I immediately noticed this feature due to the high number of discards :)

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#73

Post by happimess »

lhnn wrote: post #52

So many people in this thread are saying they highlight sections of text as they read. I don't do that, and no-one I know does that. What is the benefit? Is it intentional, or is it a habit with no real use?

I do it in more or less the same way that I idly thumb the corner of a book I'm reading, or repeatedly open and close a pen while I'm reading code.

It's just something tactile to do while my attention is otherwise occupied.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#74

Post by kibwen »

barrkel wrote: post #30
hartror wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my that NYT feature drove me nuts. Not only does it mess with us habitual selectors but it is basically hidden from the users who need it most, those not savy enough to select-right-click-search-on-google a word they don't understand.

I used AdBlock to stop the NYT script that implements it from loading. A large chunk of the reason I dislike Chrome is because of its weird text selection logic compared to Firefox - boundaries around paragraph starts and ends feel unnatural.

As another habitual text selector in this impromptu support group, I'll vouch for the assertion that Chrome's text selection behavior is really, really strange. Especially bizarre is when it wraps the highlight around the entire width of the page when selecting in a column of text.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#77

Post by scrumper »

devcpp wrote: post #71
scrumper wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> habitual selectors Ah, my condition has a name. All it needs now is a support group. My case become terminal when I discovered three finger drag on OSX. HN is a particularly good site to do it on because of the little lines and gaps that appear between selected blocks of comments. You can get a very satisfying 'pop' of a multi-comment selection springing from a single one if you move your mouse just a bit while dra…

Great, we have our first theoretician. Now we do need some sort of organizational structure for advocacy.

We do. I can smell allowances and tax exemptions. Maybe even an annual fun run.

I don't much mind about the structure, but it'd be really nice if it all lined up perfectly straight.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#78

Post by kibwen »

dice wrote: post #46
pauljz wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm kind of happy to have just learned I'm not the only person in the world who habitually selects like this. I've done this for as long as I can remember, and the NYT thing drove me nuts as well. Oddly enough I guess I always habitually deselect as well, so I've never noticed this gmail feature. Pretty useful. Now if it browsers supported Sublime Text-style multiple selections for quoting several different bits of a…

Do you also use your text selection as a bookmark?

I do this to save my spot on a page when I need to scroll up or down, but on Windows you can do one better: scroll anywhere by dragging the scroll bar at the edge of the window, then move the cursor away from the bar and your view will snap back to where you were before you started dragging.

It's the single Windows feature I miss the most on other platforms.

Re: The greatest Google Mail feature you may not be using

#79

Post by cloudkj »

I just realized that this feature also exists in Outlook, which explains why many of my replies have strange quotes. I often highlight a user id or URL to copy for further investigation, then hit reply only to be confused by the condensed quote in the reply window. Now it makes sense :)
Post reply on HN