Hacker News Reader

Comment by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 | Hacker News Reader

Hacker news isn't "fully selectable". Just try to highlight the text in the reply/update/submit buttons.

I can select the word reply, like sibling poster said, but also the glyphs.

Yeah, I removed the "glyphs" thing from my comment, because I realized they were SVG backgrounds, not actually text, but that is a common place to use user-select: none, on elements with font faces that are symbols.

I am curious what operating system you can select text from the buttons on though. I might spin up browserstack to experiment.

macOS Safari

Yeah, I just tried to select text in the button element and translate it specifically or copy it, and it doesn't work. You can highlight it, but you aren't selecting the text.

This is what is copied from the login page, you can see that the button text is missing:

username: password:

Forgot your password?

Create Account

username: password:

My fault, I didn't try to copy! I can still select, but sorry for not checking if copy is possible! From your other reply I noticed this!

But yeah, HN isn't the best in this regard :)

Maybe dang will one day consider changing to <button>reply</button>!

Works on chrome/linux as well, but you do have to know how to drag from outside the link, or switch to caret browsing (f7)

I can select the word "Reply" with no issues

Inside the button? Not the link? What OS/Browser?

I just tried this with every major OS and browser. I don't think it is possible.

You can highlight the buttons (most times) in Safari on MacOS, but you can't select the text and copy it or translate it.

You can copy <button>Text</button> in some browsers, but not when it's in <input text="Text">.

Yeah, in HN's case:

    <input value="reply" type="submit">

Sorry, you're correct. It was the link not the button. My brain gets confused talking to people using technical words correctly instead of normies that call the link a button

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