We went from using no punctuation to using too much. I struggled while reading this.
Microblog Memes
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
Rules:
- Please put at least one word relevant to the post in the post title.
- Be nice.
- No advertising, brand promotion or guerilla marketing.
- Posters are encouraged to link to the toot or tweet etc in the description of posts.
Related communities:
The no capitalization makes it hard for me. I think just re-writing with capitalization makes it a lot easier to read:
Note to UI designers. When reading a long piece of text. I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it!. I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.
Here's how I would mildly edit the punctuation in order to make it easier to read:
Note to UI designers; when reading a long piece of text, I select the text while I read it. I select the text while I read it! I select the text using my mouse. While I read the text, I often select the text. I don't want to perform actions on the text. I don't want to accidentally click share link. I want to select the text while I read it.
Here's how I would have conveyed the thought in a JIRA comment:
UI designers could you please, for the love of all mankind, stop fucking putting fucking shitty ass popups in the god damn non-mobile website! There is no one, and I mean no-fucking-body, that is still using a desktop computer in 2025 that does not know about ctrl-c and ctrl-v. There is not sane reason for you to ever assume a user wants to visit some shitty twitter/reddit/digg/blog when they select text on a desktop computer. If I see a single one of you motherfuckers putting fucking text inside an action I swear to god I will come down there and beat you to death with your own fucking keyboard.
Teams is the worst offender. It constantly wants me to call any number. Social? Phone? Whatever. I don't want to call anyone, and I sure as hell don't want to do it via Teams.
Number one thing I hate is html/css/js used for anything that is not a website. Fucking stop it.
Nonsense. AI adds rich features like these that no one wanted so VCs can become rich. The only thing missing on modern computers is blindingly-bright nuclear explosion white LEDs that shine directly into your optic nerve, all the time.
I do it, too. I rarely read any text without subconsciously marking the text while reading it. Might be a tool for me (ADHD) to make it easier not to lose track - I don't know.
But regardless of why people do it and while I agree that it's probably something very specific not a lot of users do, I refuse to believe that anyone actually uses those select->popup-> share features, ever. Often the little pop-up even blocks the text above it which is just insanely bad UX imo.
Sites should never mess with core functionality without asking (scrolling, selection, tab/keyboard navigation, hijacking common shortcuts/right click, clipboard, history, etc).
I believe someone came up with that idea a decade+ ago and people just want it on their site to add value without actually checking if anyone uses it.
Hard agree. I'm not dyslexic, but I also occasionally mark text to keep progress, especially if it's a long piece. And if I really want to copy that text, I will, sometimes just out of spite that you're trying to outsmart me, and I'm more likely to leave your site sooner too.
Also, while we're at it, can you please leave scrolling behaviour alone and not override it? I have a nice mouse that lets me scroll as fast or as slow as I want to. In some rare cases with a fancy UI where one wheel notch scrolls a whole page I agree that overriding the behaviour is warranted. In all other cases just FUCKING LEAVE SCROLLING AS IS (as handled by the OS and the browser) and don't try to be fancy; if you try to be fancy for no particular reason, I'm more likely to leave your site ASAP rather than prefer it over other sites.
It's very rare that holding alt while selecting text doesn't resolve this issue. Assuming you're on a computer. If you're not, good luck. Selecting text on phones and tables can be impossible in too many circumstances.
I have a protocol for this.
- go to website
- if UX is offensive exit website
- add website to pihole blacklist and description of why
- never visit website again
I know it doesn't mean much to them, but I refuse to accept a shitty online experience when a product team actively circumvents standard internet experiences like highlighting, copy/paste, or browser jacking (looking at you Microsoft).
To anyone who does this, I've found browser extensions for both Chrome and Firefox called reading ruler or something like that, that will basically create a highlighted horizontal column wherever your mouse cursor is at, making it much easier to read text without having to manually select it
The point is not to make it easier to read, the point is to click on and select the text.
I hear you! It sounds like you want user-select: none
on all text, because you want the site to feel more like a real newspaper, and having too many features like text selection is distracting you.
For PC, extra functions should be in the context menu in my opinion. For mobile, that's a little tougher, but maybe tapping on the selected text should bring up the options? Selecting on mobile is a tough thing anyway, and any solution is probably going to be a problem for someone else.
Actually, that's probably true for any UI design choices. There are some that are generally a good idea (like defining a reasonable navigation order for your elements or making design respond to viewport sizes to ensure that everything actually fits), but interaction options can get really muddy.
So true. Please hear us.