Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by crazygringo 442 days ago
I have literally never needed to select text in a UX element.

In the past, occasionally there would be an error message in a message box dialog that I wanted to copy and paste. And then I discovered that despite it not looking selectable, it actually was.

I don't want to accidentally select the text of my menu bar, or of a text box label, or a dialog tab title.
1 comments
sitkack 442 days ago
I, I, I. Empathy is a weakness.

Lots of limitations for you to not accidentally do something, maybe there is a way to not accidentally do those things and also help people that need them.

link
crazygringo 442 days ago
No, not providing concrete examples is a weakness.

You're awfully arrogant in making a judgement about my empathy... if you want to make this personal.

Or maybe you can justify why people need to be able to select menu labels in the first place? That's not standard on any OS I've ever used, so it's up to the person who wants to change things to justify why.

Maybe be less judgmental of people here on HN, and contribute something factual instead? I at least gave a factual account of my personal experience, which is a data point. Describing one's experience isn't egoism.

link
nazgul17 442 days ago
A simple and concrete example is, go to Japan, find yourself in need of using any Japanese-only app, be extremely frustrated in not even being able to select text to translate it.

At least in recent versions of Android there is that OCR (?) powered functionality to select text when you're in switch-app view.

link
crazygringo 441 days ago
Thank you for the example!

I would suggest that these days you'd be much better off taking a screenshot and putting that into Google Translate.

That way all the text remains in-place, and you can keep it as a visual reference to refer to.

If you were selecting text, it would wind up in a kind of jumble that would be much harder to use.

link
umbra07 440 days ago
Circle to Search can translate everything on your screen without you needing to go through the whole "copy text, open Translate, paste, switch back to app" workflow. You just hold the home button, then press the translate button.
link