A situation that’s happened to all of us at one point or another:
You’re typing up something inside a web browser. Could be Facebook. Could be email. Could be a blog editor. Whatever.
Then it happens. *Poof*, everything you typed is gone. It happens instantly and there’s absolutely no way to get your text back. It’s gone forever. Something happened in the stupid browser or stupid site that caused all the stuff you were working on to vanish.
This is what you need to use to avoid that happening again:
Yep. Good ol’ Notepad. An app that’s been around for 27 years (first appearing in Windows 1.0 in 1985). I’m personally a Notepad++ guy myself, but you probably don’t need something that advanced. All you need is a plain text editor where the text STAYS THERE and won’t magically vanish on you. And for that, Notepad is it.
Specifically concentrating on Facebook for a moment, it honestly amazes me how difficult it is sometimes just to post text on that system.
Me on Facebook using any browser: [type type type type type.. Enter] “Hey.. why didn’t the text post? What’s going on here?” [type type type type type.... Enter] “Um.. still didn’t post the text. I have to retype this crap a third time?”
Eventually, the text will post. What I learned to do is just type the text in Notepad instead, select-all to put in the clipboard buffer, switch back to the browser and then just CTRL+V to paste in Facebook. If it doesn’t work, no problem. CTRL+V again. I’ll CTRL+V as many times as I freakin’ have to just to get the stupid text to post in there.
It is sad that many web sites – social ones especially – have a rather difficult time accepting text input.
Like what you read?
If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:
Already done this way long time ago.
A lot of times I find myself typing up a post in the standard text field for a site… then suddenly, in my head, I say “whoa, whoa…. whoa, time to Ctrl+A/C/V into notepad”. Then I feel much better.
Even when I don’t end up doing that, at this point a Ctrl+A/C before hitting the submit button has become muscle memory, even for small blurbs like this one.
I agree, I learned (the hard way) a long time ago to copy what you are typing as soon as there is a significant amount. Sometimes I’ve used it to paste into something with a spelling checker. But I never considered doing the writing there and pasting here. Great idea!
Web browsers should be updated with a function to block all cursor moves and text field clears that are initiated by the website’s code. But it looks like that’ll never happen, the Mozilla team never has listened to the many thousands of complaints they get every time they change the UI for no good reason.
So how about someone write an addon to intercept and block all such commands? Of course it’d have to be maintained because you know the people who write the browser program code and the web designers will do everything they can to break it so they can get back to annoying us with their stupid cursor yanking and text field wiping.
Where the cursor is put by the user is where it should stay and what the user types should be left alone.
Yahoo Mail continues to do this with their login. If you don’t wait for the page to finish loading, the cursor will be moved from the password field to the username field and *poof* you’re typing all or part of your password in cleartext for shoulder surfers to see. Cases like that is why Mozilla and other browsers should block all cursor relocation commands.
Many times even on 1.5 meg DSL I can be halfway through a form before the site is done loading, only to have everything wiped by some arrogant web coder who thinks his or her page has to set itself to a default state before the lowly user is allowed to start typing.
P.S. I did Ctrl+A and Ctrl+C before posting this, just in case…
Another thing I’d like to see in browsers standard equipment or as an addon is a “hold line” across the middle. What that’d do is make whatever is under that virtual line *stay there* while the page is loading.
If you’ve ever tried to scroll through a really long page, especially one with a ton of images, you know how it loads. the content keeps getting “pushed down”, you’ve scrolled down a ways then *shove* your position is jerked back up a long ways.
A hold line would force the page to push down AND up from what is in the middle of the screen. Extra geek points awarded for making it so the hold line position can be adjusted because some people focus near the top of the screen and some near the bottom, or anywhere between.
The cherry on top would be to have it toggle on and off using the old Scroll Lock key, which has been useless since DOS spreadsheets became obsolete. Hold the Scroll Lock key down and pop up a handle to drag the hold line up and down.