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[sorry; digression] what is it about current sites that completely breaks text selection? is it something to do with web fonts? is it a bug in chrome (linux)

[sorry; digression] what is it about current sites that completely breaks text selection? is it something to do with web fonts? is it a bug in chrome (linux)? for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read it. i've noticed that recently on many sites - this one included - i either fail to select anything, or select an area of the screen that is only vaguely connected to the text layout. i'm pretty sure this isn't click interception. is anyone else seeing this? i guess i should poke around and see if i can find a bug report.... [edit: this seems to be the same thing - http://css-tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection-bug-at-chrome/p1 http://css-tricks.com/forums/discussion/14750/text-selection...] [edit2: i looked at chrome's bug list and there are hundreds of text selection bugs. i can't work out if this particular one is known or not.]

nicpottier 14y ago
Weird, this is just a Posterous blog, so we aren't (consciously) doing anything fancy. Selection works for me on Chrome on OS X for what it's worth.
hollerith 14y ago
Selection works as usual (e.g., wonkier than I would like, but not too bad) on Firefox 10 on OS X.
bencoder 14y ago
> for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read it. I have the same condition, selectitis. Drives the people around me mad when I'm clicking loads and I don't even notice. And websites that do things on select like pop up a definition or search box are really irritating to me.
- mike_esspe 14y ago
  It's called compulsive highlighter: https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=compulsive+highlighter https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&...
TuringTest 14y ago
Yup, you're not the only one; I've noticed the same throughout the web at the fanciest web sites. I suspect it's caused by everything being placed inside layers of nested <div>s styled with CSS. It's particularly aggravating in mobile browsers, which have worse CSS support. The worse offenders are whole rectangular paragraphs that behave as a single button, and text input fields that don't get recognized when I click on them on my android browser (Coursera, I'm looking at you).

nicpottier 14y ago

Weird, this is just a Posterous blog, so we aren't (consciously) doing anything fancy. Selection works for me on Chrome on OS X for what it's worth.

hollerith 14y ago

Selection works as usual (e.g., wonkier than I would like, but not too bad) on Firefox 10 on OS X.

bencoder 14y ago

> for some strange reason i unconsciously select text on the screen as i read it. I have the same condition, selectitis. Drives the people around me mad when I'm clicking loads and I don't even notice. And websites that do things on select like pop up a definition or search box are really irritating to me.

mike_esspe 14y ago
It's called compulsive highlighter: https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=compulsive+highlighter https://www.google.com/search?oq=compulsive+highlighter&...

TuringTest 14y ago

Yup, you're not the only one; I've noticed the same throughout the web at the fanciest web sites. I suspect it's caused by everything being placed inside layers of nested <div>s styled with CSS. It's particularly aggravating in mobile browsers, which have worse CSS support. The worse offenders are whole rectangular paragraphs that behave as a single button, and text input fields that don't get recognized when I click on them on my android browser (Coursera, I'm looking at you).