I protest the new, different functionality of the “Insert Hyperlink” button on the post entry form. Even in the very recent past, the button worked quite differently, in that it was non-modal. You were able to switch back and forth between pages at any time after hitting the button, allowing the following technique I usually used:
(1) Once you got to the point where you want to insert a titled link, you pressed the button;
(2) You then switched to another window or tab that held the page you wanted to link, copying the title text and then entering it into the entry box;
(3) You then copied the URL to the clipboard, then posted it into the second entry box.
Now, you are not allowed to do that. You’re not allowed to use the clipboard for one or the other; you have to memorize it, because it’s now modal!
Did you happen to recently change to Firefox version 2? I’m not about to revert to an older Firefox just to check that (I’m happy with what I have), but after some playing around, you’re making me think that FF 2 did change the behaviour of Insert Link slightly. I don’t post that much and what I post doesn’t include that many links so you may just be making me misremember
In any case, if you’re using FF 2, you can get around the modal aspect by opening a new instance of FF 2 (not just a new thread) and using it to grab what you need.
Just an arbitrary web page with both the title and link copy-and-pasted to prove I’m not right out to lunch - Chuck Shepherd’s News of the Weird
The other alternative is to copy the link to the clipboard before you click on the Insert Hyperlink button. It still allows you to paste from the clipboard, just not switch to another tab.
I noticed a change when I upgrqaded to IE7, which uses tabs. I can’t copy from one tab and paste into another, but I can copy from one window into another window.
My apologies, everyone. TubaDiva, Canadjun and others were spot on: I had just recently changed to using FF2 but it had slipped my mind. As a software developer of many years, you’d think I’d consider all recent software changes before bitching. Doh!
This actually occurred to me after I left the site and went to bed. Oh, well.
The solution was to install the IE Tab FireFox add-on and set it to use the internal IE engine for all sites from the “boards.straightdope.com” domain. Problem solved! The old functionality is back.
Ain’t FireFox grand?
One big gotcha, though, is that when the IE engine handles a page, you lose several of the other FF add-ons. As usual, it’s a trade-off.
That’s what I had been using all along until just a couple of days ago. When I switched to FireFox 2, that functionality had changed. I wonder how many other non-modal to modal dialog boxes I’ll eventually see with FF2?
That’s just what I did, though without remembering it prior to posting. But as I pointed out in my previous post, I’m worried that I’ll be running into a lot more pages whose formerly non-modal dialog boxes will become modal ones in FF2. I’ll have to do more research.
It might well also work to open a new window (rather than a tab) in the same instantiation instead of a whole new instance. I’ll just try it now…
Yep, that works. You can switch between windows in FF2 behind a modal dialog box, but not a tab. This sounds like the same thing that’s happening to Fear Itself with IE7.
That’s actually a somewhat better solution that using “IE Tab” I wrote of earlier, because this way, you don’t lose all the add-ons, too.
Just because I’m not enamored of that solution doesn’t mean I’m not a HUGE admirer of QuicKeys! That’s my all-time favorite bit of utility software. It almost makes me want to return to the Mac.
You’re right, of course. We’ve just gotten lazy. Why, in my day we entered stuff into the computer the old fashioned way, entering it all in octal on the front panels of our PDP-8s and -11s. And we liked it that way!
I also just got failures in the hyperlink.
I had just switched to Internet Explorer 7 Beta.
I think it may be blocking it as a pop-up, but it’s not reporting it in the status bar that way.