Prometheus 6: Why

October 09, 2003

Why

What is it with some sites where if you try to mark something to copy to the clipboard the entire damn page is elected? Case in point.

And it's only IE. Maybe IE6.

Look,when the Google toolbar comes in a Mozilla flavor and I can get the get the same HTML editing capability that I have with IE, I'll switch to Mozilla, full time permanent, okay?

Posted by P6 at October 9, 2003 03:41 PM | Trackback URL: http://www.prometheus6.org/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1932

Comments

I was wondering that myself. One fix - if they have permalinks, click the permalink, then you can highlight text. Why? No fuckin' clue. If all else fails, you can right click and select "View Source", then do your copy, which has the added bonus of picking up their HTML (assuming you want it).

Posted by at October 9, 2003 06:28 PM

If you figure out what it is about the code on the page that causes that problem, and it's something I can change, I'll be happy to.

What browser/platform does it happen in, so I can play with it myself?

Thanks...

Posted by at October 9, 2003 07:05 PM

I'm using IE 6.0/XP.

Posted by at October 9, 2003 07:40 PM

I think it may have to do with your OS. On my laptop i have win2k and use ie 6 and the text highlighting is excellent. It never gives me any problems.

But I'm using a university computer with XP and ie6 and the text highlighting is wierd - its like highlight top to bottom or something.

On my site, at least... on your site its highlighting like it does on my laptop. This certainly is wierd, though i've noticed it before.

Posted by at October 9, 2003 08:00 PM

Here is a mention of a problem people have with selecting text in Internet Explorer on certain weblogs. The issue, however, is not related to weblogs alone and would occur on any site where absolute positioning is used in the
Read more in Particularly Blog-Vexing Internet Explorer 6 Bug »

Jamie Jamison On Technology Oct 9, 2003 9:25 PM

Here's a post with an answer; something to do with "style sheets." Can someone translate from Technish?

Posted by at October 9, 2003 10:45 PM

The problem relates to CSS (Cascading Style Sheets). The idea of CSS allows you to separate the content of your web site from the design. For a good example of how CSS works, you can take a look at the CSS Zen Garden site.

Without getting into too many technical details, the actual problem relates to how IE6 on Windows XP interprets the CSS information to display the page. My post has a link to another site that goes into more detail on CSS if you are interested.

Posted by at October 9, 2003 11:12 PM

I've been using the Google Toolbar on Mozilla FireBird for months now.

Posted by at October 10, 2003 01:26 PM

Michael:

You are the MAN.

Unfortunately the cross-platform HTML editing thing isn't going to happen unless Firebird implements it. I need to keep an eye on that project, I guess.

Posted by at October 10, 2003 01:37 PM