Isn't it amazing when text is also not selectable? Like its rendered behind some other shit?
I fucking hate websites ❤️
Or when you try and select a letter and it auto selects the whole fucking work or sentence, jumping all over the place?
I HATE that. I like to save things i read or find interesting in Joplin (open source notebook software) and it always has to be this giant fucking undertaking to copy some text off a website. I am annoyed just thinking about it... So i always end up just copying everything on the page instead. Don't have time for that shit...
The reddit mobile app has broken text selection. I did same thing as OP but with my stylus.
UI designer/developer here. One who works on features that facilitate reading.
Based on their writing style and the text highlighting habit, this person is likely dyslexic. I've helped create functions that facilitate this behavior, which is better suited as a mode that can be enabled manually. There are browser extensions that can do this sort of thing for you. I've worked on a lot of assistive reading features.
If this was set as a default behavior, most users would fucking riot. Most of them are using text highlighting for what this person doesn't want to do.
Edit - I think I need to emphasize that this is based on real data. A shit ton of it. These decisions aren't made based on vibes. If the user base is performing a specific action repeatedly, we're going to facilitate it. We can see what you all are doing. UI's aren't built around a bunch of conflicting edge cases based on anecdotes. If something performs a certain way, at least major applications, it's usually because a lot of direct observations and metrics have strongly indicated that this is the preferred approach.
Admittedly, sometimes business goals get in the way of that. But if those business goals we have to push get in the way of conversions, they get abandoned pretty quickly.
(Apologies for my tone below, but this affects me also, and I dislike the notion that messing with how you normally select text is a niche desire)
We don't need any new functionality or a custom mode, we just want unexpected popups to not get in the way of expected behaviour when selecting text.
As long as your options appear well above the text, and doesn't cancel the highlighting, I can't accept whatever you want to do. But as the OP writes, if it's easy to misclick, this is bad UI design because it does not conform to the expectation that nothing will pop up. (Google Docs is the first example that comes to mind as implementing popup options totally fine, from recollection)
If it's too close to the selected text and causes misclicks, then I'm gonna be annoyed about this since the vast, vast majority (luckily) of text on the internet you can highlight to your heart's content and nothing pops up.
Just keep options decently above the highlighted text (I dunno what the right number is, 2 lines above the start of your selection? hey I'm not a UI designer)
In conclusion, change is okay, but intuition is important.
Tantacrul makes some great UI videos if you haven't seen them before (not that I'm telling you how to suck eggs about your own profession, he's just genuinely funny and interesting to watch)
lots of people do it, not just people with dyslexia. it helps keep track of where you are when there are large blocks of text. also it usually raises contrast so I'm sure that helps some people even more.
I disagree.
The mode for options is called the right mouse button and the mode for just highlighting is the left mouse button. One of the great pillars of UI design is conforming to expectations.
UI user here.
A good rule of thumb for interfaces is "one action, one function." Highlighting text and opening a context menu are two separate functions that should require separate actions (at least as default behavior, user configurability is also a good thing). If I highlight text, the only thing that should indicate is that I want the text highlighted. If I subsequently want a context menu, I will do the context menu action (right click, long press, etc). A UI should never be trying to predict what I want and it absolutely should not be doing things that I didn't explicitly direct.
You need sane defaults and having what is effectively a predefined macro is not a sane default.
I think I agree with you. I usually select the text to do an action and the choices are useful. I don't select for the better reading, if anything it's just to highlight the text.
We can see what you all are doing.
No, you are seeing what the people too clueless to install tracking protection are doing.
I can confirm the dyslexia thing and highlighting
Come to Japan where they like to make everything images instead. Can't select it, can't copy it, can't translate it without a camera, can't preview the text of something, is bad for accessibility, etc.
Do you want to copy text into a translator app? Fuck you!
Hard agree. I'm not dyslexic, but I also occasionally mark text to keep progress, especially if it's a long piece. And if I really want to copy that text, I will, sometimes just out of spite that you're trying to outsmart me, and I'm more likely to leave your site sooner too.
Also, while we're at it, can you please leave scrolling behaviour alone and not override it? I have a nice mouse that lets me scroll as fast or as slow as I want to. In some rare cases with a fancy UI where one wheel notch scrolls a whole page I agree that overriding the behaviour is warranted. In all other cases just FUCKING LEAVE SCROLLING AS IS (as handled by the OS and the browser) and don't try to be fancy; if you try to be fancy for no particular reason, I'm more likely to leave your site ASAP rather than prefer it over other sites.
I do this. It’s just a stimming thing while reading web articles and I hate being sent to Twitter or whatever for it.
We went from using no punctuation to using too much. I struggled while reading this.
The no capitalization makes it hard for me. I think just re-writing with capitalization makes it a lot easier to read:
Note to UI designers. When reading a long piece of text. I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it!. I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.
Here's how I would mildly edit the punctuation in order to make it easier to read:
Note to UI designers; when reading a long piece of text, I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it! I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text, I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.
Here's how I would have conveyed the thought in a JIRA comment:
UI designers could you please, for the love of all mankind, stop fucking putting fucking shitty ass popups in the god damn non-mobile website! There is no one, and I mean no-fucking-body, that is still using a desktop computer in 2025 that does not know about ctrl-c and ctrl-v. There is not sane reason for you to ever assume a user wants to visit some shitty twitter/reddit/digg/blog when they select text on a desktop computer. If I see a single one of you motherfuckers putting fucking text inside an action I swear to god I will come down there and beat you to death with your own fucking keyboard.
I’d avoid Last Exit From Brooklyn if I were you.
For PC, extra functions should be in the context menu in my opinion. For mobile, that's a little tougher, but maybe tapping on the selected text should bring up the options? Selecting on mobile is a tough thing anyway, and any solution is probably going to be a problem for someone else.
Actually, that's probably true for any UI design choices. There are some that are generally a good idea (like defining a reasonable navigation order for your elements or making design respond to viewport sizes to ensure that everything actually fits), but interaction options can get really muddy.
In linux land highlighting text can auto copy it and miuse wheel close ck auto pastes. Also i do love to highlight text for read ability
that reminds me of how scrolling would edit settings in GUI menus. Made me so mad because I don't know what I accidentally changed but I changed something that's gonna send me on a wild goose chase in 2 weeks
honestly i really hate that. i managed to get rid of it auto copying selected text (don't remember how) but seriously how do i disable pasting with the mouse wheel, it's never what i want to do
Relevant for SwayWM users:
Relevant for Firefox (or similar) users:
middlemouse.paste in about:config to remove this behavior, as Firefox handles this separatelyIt so deep in old linux code that goes back to the origin of mice.
What's your desktop environment? Because it's going to depend on that.
it's sway
I select the whole text, then one word less from both ends, then one word less from both ends, then.... You get it... Until I'm down to the last 1 or 2 words.
This comment makes me think there aren't many stray cats left in your neighborhood.
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