[m a d r a]

well, i've been using macs for more years than i care to count and OSX since public beta, so i'm not exactly wet behind the [huge] ears at this stuff. but there's been a small insignificant mac operating skill that still seems to elude me after all these years. why, nary five minutes ago i presented the following picture as i tried to rise to the monumental challenge of... fanfare.... "highlighting a line of text on a webpage so i could copy it":


tongue hanging out, eyes-crossed, sweat pouring down forehead, teeth grinding in frustration, face turning more purple by the second as all my careful dragging from left to right along the sentence i was trying to copy produced a myriad of results - except for the one i feckin' wanted!... selecting text on the line above... selecting text on the line below... selecting the paragraph above... selecting the paragraph below... selecting to the left of the cursor while i dragged to the left... selecting to the right of the cursor while i dragged to the right... only beginning to select the text at an arbitrary point along the line after i've started dragging... arbitrarily deselecting some of the text after i stop dragging... arbitrarily deselecting all of the text after i've stopped dragging....!

i have similar problems whenever trying to make text selections with that accursed I-beam cursor that most text editing apps use.

so is it really just me, or any of the rest of you prepared to come out of the closet, hanging your stupid heads in shame and confess that you too are a text-selecting retard?

[if enough of us get together we can blame the OS ]

[Catfish_Man]

Actually, yeah, I've had issues with that. If I see it again I'll try to have a look in more detail and figure out what's going on.

[lil'babykitten]

**** yeah I have that problem too!

[Dr. Smoke]

I often find it easier to select text in a Web page by first clicking on the page just ahead of the text I wish to select.

If you're using the Apple Pro Mouse, you might want to consider a better mouse. I use a Logitech MX700.

[Brass]

your start and end points for selection need to be ON the first and last character, not just to the left or just to the right of them.

This often helps, but still doesn't always get it right.

The problems are with the browsers, not the OS. Some browsers certainly do it better than others. Camino seems to be easier to manage than I remember in some other browsers.

I'm guessing that the problems are due to the complex nature of how the browsers lay out the page (including many text views, some overlayed over others, within the same window). Any drag that moves from one view to another gets a screwed up selection.

[Jellytussle]

umm, treble clicking the line you wanted not working for you?

[m a d r a]

Originally posted by Jellytussle:
umm, treble clicking the line you wanted not working for you?

hah! - treble clicking selected nothing at all!

[Brass]

Originally posted by m a d r a:
hah! - treble clicking selected nothing at all!

which browser you using?

... and what web page, and which sentence/line on that page?

[ryju]

Um if I can do it on a trackpad why can't you do it with a mouse?

Work on your motor skills.

[Turnpike]

Seeing as how moving a mouse from left to right or from right to left isn't very hard, I'm going to say the problem must be the website you are using. tables can really, really screw things up. possibly other things, too (wacky CSS margin hacks and poorly thought-out box model hacks, perhaps)

btw, yes... I too will use this as an excuse to pimp the mx700. Great mouse.

[Apfhex]

Some websites are just impossible to select text on. There's no problems with these forms, but I encounter pages on an almost daily basis where I spend far too long trying to copy just a small block of text. I think Windows browsers have the same problem sometimes.

Never had a problem with word processors, though, except on Windows where I have a terrible time with the I-beam cursor! It's always some pixels to the side of what I want. Especially annoying when trying to select a part of a URL.

[m a d r a]

Originally posted by ryju:
Um if I can do it on a trackpad why can't you do it with a mouse?

Work on your motor skills.

er... where did i say i was using a mouse? i'm using a trackpad too.

work on your 'not jumping to conclusions' skills


------------------------------------------

the particular example which occurred yesterday and prompted my original rant was while using omniweb. unfortunately i cannae remember the exact page [and besides, what i was trying to copy was a PHP error message which was subsequently fixed], but this has happened on more than one occasion - and often enough to provoke me to one of my increasingly infrequent MACNN rants.

it's strange, i can throw a lasso round a complicated selection in seconds with photoshop, or effortlessly pick out and manipulate a single point in a vector image in illustrator, but i always find the allegedly mundane task of selecting text [in almost all apps] to be much more of a hit and miss affair.

[Love Calm Quiet]

I *sometimes* have problems selecting text (TiBook track pad), but on *this very page* (using Safari) triple-click selects a line just fine, as always in safari.

Double-click-drag collects the words I drag over... Seems to work fine.

I've had trouble on *some sites* ... only to have the problems disappear when the *site* changes. I tend to suspect the suggestion was right about (at least in browsers) that the problem is with how certain browsers render certain designs (tables?)

[phantomdragonz]

from my experience, you just have to be patient, click, wait a second (well half of one) and then drag.... but then again, I have a 400Mhz g4 running the 10.3.7

Zach