[pauljz]

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 long email, that'd be perfect.

On a sidenote it's kind of fascinating how polarised people are about this feature.

[markokocic]

People are polarized because some find it very useful and some very annoying. Seems like a perfect example of what would be the best candidate for configuration option.

[dice]

Do you also use your text selection as a bookmark?

[kibwen]

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.

[unwind]

Thanks. That's the first time I've ever heard of a use-case that validates that functionality.

I still remember the rage I felt when I switched from the Amiga in 1996 to the PC and found that Windows did that; screwing up a large part of the usability of scrollbars (for me) by adding a (to me) completely incomprehensible requirement for ultra-precise mouse movement or else you get BAM! back to where you started.

Note: not trying to claim that you are in any way "wrong", of course, I'm just pointing out the opposite perspective since I found yours interesting.