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Comment by zdw | Hacker News Reader

This page has great content, but some Javascript or CSS stupidity that prevents text selection. Anyone have a good fix to reenable that?

I use the text selection highlight as I read just to keep my place when scrolling around to look at the images.

Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.

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I do the same thing, using text selection to keep my place when scrolling. Feels very gross having to resort to extensions to restore what should be basic browser functionality. (e.g. Don't Fuck With Paste[0] for sites that try to prevent you pasting passwords)

[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/don-t-fuck-wi...

My "dystopian future prediction" is it's about to get a whole lot worse.

Browser makers can stop JS shenanigans, but they are also integrating web assembly: the perfect tool for creating user-hostile, proprietary, unblockable features.

Sites will deploy stupid things like "a browser inside a browser". Soon OCR/"analog holes" will be the only way around them.

Paste this on the browser console:

document.body.onselectstart = function() {return true;};

alternatively, firefox reader mode doesn't intercept selection events

Does this work on mobile also?

It does in Firefox on Android.

> Browser makers need to come up with a "Disable user-hostile features" toggle that gets rid of this and form related BS like the inability to paste passwords.

It exist in most browsers and is typically called something allng the lines "disable Javascript" :-)

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