I too click and highlight text whilst I read it.

Can I suggest using a double click to turn readable text into editable text. 

I have found this feature on a website I use. It is much more user friendly and 
allows them to quickly edit the text.



Regards

Adrian Halid
Senior Analyst/Programmer



IT Vision Australia Pty Ltd (ABN: 34 309 336 904)
PO Box 881, Canning Bridge WA 6153
Level 3, Kirin Centre, 15 Ogilvie Road, Applecross, WA, 6153
P:  (08) 9315 7000      F:  (08) 9315 7088
E:  adrian.ha...@itvision.com.au        W: http://www.itvision.com.au
    
___________________________________________________________  
                          
NOTICE : This e-mail and any attachments are intended for the addressee(s) only 
and may
contain confidential or privileged material. Any unauthorised review, use, 
alteration,
disclosure or distribution of this e-mail (including any attachments) by an 
unintended recipient
is prohibited. If you are not the intended recipient please contact the sender 
as soon as
possible by return e-mail and then delete both messages.
___________________________________________________________

From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On 
Behalf Of Joseph Clark
Sent: Monday, 16 April 2012 4:14 PM
To: ozDotNet
Subject: Users who compulsively highlight or click text as they read it - are 
you out there?

Hi list!

This is a bit of an odd request, but I'm yet to find the right incantation of 
search phrases that will yield results from the Internet - hopefully you can 
help!

There is a certain subset of computer users who, when reading text on the 
screen, compulsively click or highlight text that they are reading on the 
screen (I am one of them!).  I didn't even know I was doing it until someone 
pointed it out to me whilst I was pairing with them a few years ago.

One of our in-house products recently shipped a new milestone version 
internally with a new "feature" when viewing issues that allows you to 
instantly edit the content of the fields on the screen simply by simply 
clicking on them (turning the plain HTML into editable form controls 
on-the-fly). This is pretty neat, but as a serial text-clicker, this feature is 
downright infuriating.  I was happy to put this down as either a little 
personality quirk of my own, or merely some indication that I may be insane, 
but a quick straw poll of those nearby finds at least 3 other people who have 
the same behaviour, or some variant (one guy says he clicks on browser windows 
a lot as a muscle-memory thing to ensure the right browser window has focus).

I'm trying to describe to the other team why this new feature sucks for some 
people, but I have no idea if that "some people" is one in ten users, or one in 
one million.  Have searched a bit online for information about this, but I 
don't really know what to search for. Does this user behaviour have a name? Are 
there other people like me out there (hello? hello?)? Any literature around on 
whether or not its a great idea to bind functionality to an innocuous 
user-action like text-selection or clicking in an apparently non-clickable 
area?  

Cheers!
Joe.

Reply via email to