4 ms·

Ask YC: What do you think of this NY Times feature

6 points by kashif 19y ago

This is a feature I stumbled on ... Goto a full page article on nytimes.com article and double click a word(not hyper linked) Try this one.. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/09/world/europe/09delhi.html?scp=2&sq=india What do you think of this feature?

vasudeva 19y ago
Annoying and redundant. I often find myself clicking on a page to either force focus to that window, or to select text to act as a highlight so I can find my place easily later on. This means any accidental doubleclicks are launching new tabs or windows that I don't want. If I want a definition of a word, I have more global, convenient ways of handling that. Now, if instead double-clicking did something like spawn a topic search through NYT or news.google.com or something, without the hassle of underlining every word, I can imagine that would at least seem useful.
aristus 19y ago
An interesting idea, stupidly mangled by the corporate process. If they manage to make it useful that would be nice. But I suspect it's just ploy to boost pageviews, and will be measured solely on that. You can only do one word at a time. I can look up "republic" and "day", but not the phrase "republic day". The click time-window is long, about 800msecs. Lots of accidental pvs there.
jakewolf 19y ago
A browser based vocab tool is something I'd be interested in using especially for more literary sites.
- paulgb 19y ago
  I was looking for the same thing yesterday (if I understand what you mean about a vocab tool). I settled on the answers.com extension (http://www.answers.com/main/firefox_plugins.jsp http://www.answers.com/main/firefox_plugins.jsp). I didn't look around very hard so maybe there is something better out there.
whacked_new 19y ago
I dislike it, very much, mostly because it is intrusive (pop up). Its behavior violates the principle of least surprise, since most websites and applications don't do that. If it was an inline popup box in the margin, I would probably like it.
danielha 19y ago
I obsessively click and highlight text while I read, so it quickly becomes annoying for me. Anyhow, I have already have the answers.com plugin for Firefox, which brings up that overlay on command.
- dcurtis 19y ago
  I thought I was the only person who obsessively clicked and highlighted text as I read. We should start a club.
  - scw 19y ago
    Meet your reddit brethren: http://reddit.com/info/5yw4h/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/5yw4h/comments/
  - far33d 19y ago
    I do this too. I'm convinced it's a vestigial habit of the "old" web, where it was very common to have a crazy img based background and text that you couldn't read. I found myself highlighting text on the web all the time just so I could get better contrast. It's possible myspace will create a whole new generation of obsessive highlighters.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Me too. I thought I was insane for doing that. Glad to hear at least someone else is.
  - jkush 19y ago
    There was a thread on reddit a while back. I think us click and highlighters are in good company. http://reddit.com/info/64ek1/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/64ek1/comments/
    - eru 19y ago
      I use ctrl-A.
dcurtis 19y ago
Command-control-d is much better in Mac OS X.
Alex3917 19y ago
Add the following line to Adblock Plus in Firefox: http://*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js http://*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js That will fix the problem.
danw 19y ago
Dislike it with a passion I normally reserve for "Are you sure you wish to close this window" popups and lightboxes. Solutions are to block "altClickToSearch.js" with an adblocker or install a greasemonkey script such as: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721
daniel-cussen 19y ago
It's a terrible idea. I bet someone had to come up with a feature to justify their IT job and created this monster. This, along with the PR "business" articles in the fashion section, made me lose the most respect for nytimes.

6 points by kashif 19y ago

vasudeva 19y ago

Annoying and redundant. I often find myself clicking on a page to either force focus to that window, or to select text to act as a highlight so I can find my place easily later on. This means any accidental doubleclicks are launching new tabs or windows that I don't want. If I want a definition of a word, I have more global, convenient ways of handling that. Now, if instead double-clicking did something like spawn a topic search through NYT or news.google.com or something, without the hassle of underlining every word, I can imagine that would at least seem useful.

aristus 19y ago

An interesting idea, stupidly mangled by the corporate process. If they manage to make it useful that would be nice. But I suspect it's just ploy to boost pageviews, and will be measured solely on that. You can only do one word at a time. I can look up "republic" and "day", but not the phrase "republic day". The click time-window is long, about 800msecs. Lots of accidental pvs there.

jakewolf 19y ago

A browser based vocab tool is something I'd be interested in using especially for more literary sites.

paulgb 19y ago
I was looking for the same thing yesterday (if I understand what you mean about a vocab tool). I settled on the answers.com extension (http://www.answers.com/main/firefox_plugins.jsp http://www.answers.com/main/firefox_plugins.jsp). I didn't look around very hard so maybe there is something better out there.

whacked_new 19y ago

I dislike it, very much, mostly because it is intrusive (pop up). Its behavior violates the principle of least surprise, since most websites and applications don't do that. If it was an inline popup box in the margin, I would probably like it.

danielha 19y ago

I obsessively click and highlight text while I read, so it quickly becomes annoying for me. Anyhow, I have already have the answers.com plugin for Firefox, which brings up that overlay on command.

dcurtis 19y ago
I thought I was the only person who obsessively clicked and highlighted text as I read. We should start a club.
- scw 19y ago
  Meet your reddit brethren: http://reddit.com/info/5yw4h/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/5yw4h/comments/
- far33d 19y ago
  I do this too. I'm convinced it's a vestigial habit of the "old" web, where it was very common to have a crazy img based background and text that you couldn't read. I found myself highlighting text on the web all the time just so I could get better contrast. It's possible myspace will create a whole new generation of obsessive highlighters.
mattmaroon 19y ago
Me too. I thought I was insane for doing that. Glad to hear at least someone else is.
- jkush 19y ago
  There was a thread on reddit a while back. I think us click and highlighters are in good company. http://reddit.com/info/64ek1/comments/ http://reddit.com/info/64ek1/comments/
  - eru 19y ago
    I use ctrl-A.

dcurtis 19y ago

Command-control-d is much better in Mac OS X.

Alex3917 19y ago

Add the following line to Adblock Plus in Firefox: http://*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js http://*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js That will fix the problem.

danw 19y ago

Dislike it with a passion I normally reserve for "Are you sure you wish to close this window" popups and lightboxes. Solutions are to block "altClickToSearch.js" with an adblocker or install a greasemonkey script such as: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721 http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721

daniel-cussen 19y ago

It's a terrible idea. I bet someone had to come up with a feature to justify their IT job and created this monster. This, along with the PR "business" articles in the fashion section, made me lose the most respect for nytimes.