> like disabling selecting text when you shouldn't be able to
This is the worst thing in computers. Why would you EVER _block_ the ability to select text? I am engaged enough to want to select something you made! Embrace that, don't stop it!
This is the worst thing in computers. Why would you EVER _block_ the ability to select text? I am engaged enough to want to select something you made! Embrace that, don't stop it!
Examples: the text in a menu item, the text in a button, the Unicode x in a close icon, the bar between menus.
This is really noticeable in a few web applications where you can select the wrong thing and it interferes severely with using the UI (I have experienced this with Windows and Android).
Yes, you usually want to be able to select the main text. However many mobile UI frameworks just disable all selection, because that is the easiest way to also disable selection within UI controls (managing this issue is actually quite difficult from my experience writing a HTML UI framework).
Good HTML UI frameworks don't make this mistake.
For example I use Visual Studio Code every day and the UI seems pretty good to me (panels, menus, tabs, check boxes, combos etc). I am presuming it uses a component framework (although I admit I haven't looked at the source).
So don't always allow selecting everything. If you start your selection inside "content", constrain to content, don't select labels. If you start on a label, select labels and maybe content too.
Native apps do this all the time in small degrees, people are used to it: "select all" selects content, not chrome, and it's context-sensitive in many cases (e.g. select all in a folder doesn't select parent folders even if they're visible).
Don't block selection please.
On the other hand, getting people to copy what they see rather than read it out loud incorrectly can, pretty often, cut several rounds of back-and-forth out of remote tech support. It seems insane because it is, but yes - copying text in a button rather than having them say "I clicked the yes button" (when no such button exists) is a useful feature.
Imagine what it would be like if a click and drag on a window title bar moved the window but a click and drag on the text part of the title bar just selected text.
Back in the Amiga days there was a nice little app that let you go into selection mode and then draw a rect around anything and it would pseudo-ocr it. Surely something like that exists on current machines, but I havn't seen it.
Another example are tables that have selection boxes for records or “action” links in each row like print or view. If I could select this table without those columns coming along for the copy ride I’d cut at least one if not a few steps out for every time I copy/paste something.