This was originally intended for the pit, but it’s more of a slightly-annoyed observation than an actual rant.
At some point in the development of “smart” software, the Powers That Be decided that, in order to help us morons out, they’d give the click-and-drag text-selecting feature on our computers the power to intuit what we want to select before we finish actually dragging. Maybe it was to help us save time, I’m not sure. I have a small inkling that it might have been intended to solve the ‘problem’ of trying to select a word and ending up with either not the whole intended selection or ending up with extraneous characters on either side.
Regardless, we now have the fully empowered and implemented “intelligent” selection tool. Except that I struggle every freakin’ day with getting the computer to select only the text I want.
Here on the boards, and also at work, I often end up trying to select text while avoiding tags surrounding it. The so-called “smart” computer can NEVER! seem to allow that.
Case in point. Today I was building some small html lists. I’m closing each list item with a </li> tag. I try to select and copy the one </li> tag and just click and paste it to the end of each other item, but because there was a period before the tag:
blah blah text.</li>
… I can’t in any way by basic click and drag select the without also including the preceding period. I have to insert a space, then select and copy the tag, and then delete the space again. Some time-saver!
Likewise, here on the boards, if I’m quoting someone, and I want to use only a portion of their quote, and try to delete some of it:
{quote}text text text
text text
text to be deleted.{/quote}
... I can't highlight the text to be deleted without it also selecting the first part of the close quote tag!!! I mean, come on! Whose bright idea was it to decide that any successive punctuation marks all must be included together? It boggles the mind.
Er, so yeah. That's my rant. Any other "efficiencies" built into software (or elsewhere) that seem to slow productivity?
What I find most annoying is when I cut-and-paste text from a web browser onto Powerpoint, and PowerPoint tries to preserve the original formatting information. Font size and type, and all that. I think Word does that too. When is that ever a useful feature? I’m creating a new document/presentation here, I’m not likely to want to use the same font as the web site I’m taking the info from.
I’ve found that sometimes, the only way to highlight things properly is to use the keyboard. Usually editors have a setting somewhere where you can turn off the auto-highlighting “feature”. In Word, select “Tools->Options”, then select the “Edit” tab, and uncheck “When selecting, automatically select the entire word.”.
“Edit->Paste Special” then select “Unformatted Text”.
That doesn’t work for me(in IE, anyway), if I understand you properly. You mean click at one end of what you want to highlight, then begin holding the shift key, and then click at the other end of what you’re highlighting?
To be frank I can’t remember if this is an automatic one or if it’s a macro I made so long ago that I can’t remember. Let me know if you need tips on making macros. Very helpful.
This is probably the stuff that bugs me the most, practically speaking, about Windows. Grew up with Apple, where what you select is, y’know, what you select.
I’m a Firefox/Linux user exclusively these days, but I know the highlighting behavior you’re talking about. I believe IE will let you highlight only what you want if you do so “backwards.” Start at the end of what you want to highlight and work back to the beginning. That solved the “intelligent” highlighting problem for me in at least one Windows program.
Actually, the Mac lets you do it either way: Click-and-drag selects what you select. Double-click and drag selects by word. This is embedded fairly deep in the Apple programming APIs, so it works pretty much everywhere.
It’s actually one of a few dozen small interface consistancies that you don’t notice until you move to a platform that doesn’t do them.
I’ve always though that the unformatted version should be the default and the formatted paste the alternate. I certainly use the former more often and I think most people do.
I’ve found that it’s not so much starting backwords as it is indentifying the palces that Windwos will “extend” the auto-highlight, and starting there. For instance, in your two examples above, try highliting it by starting the cursor right after the period, and go towards the other end of what you want to highlight. Yes, it will include the extra punctuation, but now, bring the cursor back to where you started and highlight it again, you just canceled to auto highlight feature and it shouldn’t include the extra spots.
Oh, I know. But if I try double-clicking+dragging in Windows, I’ll end up selecting “Throatwarbler Man” instead of “Throatwarbler Mangrove,” a situation I can rarely imagine being useful. How often do you need to select four words and then half a word?!