I do it. I actually thought about what I was doing too. I believe in my case it's the technological equivalent of pointing at text when you read - ya'know, wot the teachr seyd not to?
T. From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of Peter Gfader Sent: Monday, 16 April 2012 9:44 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: Users who compulsively highlight or click text as they read it -are you out there? I am one of the highlighters-while-reading and know at least 2 others. It would be interesting to see what people highlight and what not... Then you might know that the user has read it? Suggestion: Collect those highlights from the users via JS and send it back to the server for later heat map generation... .peter.gfader. (current mood = happy-go-lucky) http://blog.gfader.com On Mon, Apr 16, 2012 at 12:35 PM, Ian Thomas <il.tho...@iinet.net.au> wrote: I had never thought to search, but there's even advice on how to do it! http://binged.it/HKHbK8 _____ Ian Thomas Victoria Park, Western Australia _____ From: ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com [mailto:ozdotnet-boun...@ozdotnet.com] On Behalf Of noonie Sent: Monday, April 16, 2012 5:41 PM To: ozDotNet Subject: Re: Users who compulsively highlight or click text as they read it -are you out there? Quick Google search only revealed this straw poll on whirlpool... http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/archive/803426 -- nonie (mobile) On Apr 16, 2012 6:13 PM, "Joseph Clark" <jcl...@atlassian.com> wrote: 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. -- .peter.gfader. (current mood = happy!) Check this before you go live http://blog.gfader.com/2011/07/website-check-list-part-1-aspnet-4.html
