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Comment by travisporter | Hacker News Reader

> I'm posting it here since HN rejects it with "that comment is too long.

My god just thinking that you typed all this in a text box and were one accidental mouse click/backspace away from losing it all is making me shudder.

That final link really resonated with me. thank you so much for sharing.

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Does this not persist when you navigate around? I've only ever seen the page contents here -- including text input values -- change if I explicitly reload. I haven't looked in any detail, but based on the behavior it seems to generally be getting cached in the browser?

(Though it does seem to be an HN thing specifically, and yes, I would absolutely dread this if I were typing a draft anywhere else)

4chan's website has this feature. Whenever you post a long thread and fail a CAPTCHA, all you need to do is click on [Start a new Thread] and hit ctrl + z. I am positive that almost every internet forum website has this feature. You can even hit ctrl + z on Discord and it'll undo your typing in the message box.

I've experienced that so many times that whenever I'm typing a comment above a certain length, I switch to my text editor, write it there, and then paste it back into the browser when I'm done.

I always type messages in an editor (EditPad Pro for me) and them paste them into the text boxes. I do this for email also.

And web apps are the “future”.

I'm no web dev at all, but it seems to me like a tiny amount of Javascript might prevent that by graying out the Post button if the text is too long.

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