Comments on: As Web Text Input Areas Continue To Suck More, A Text Editor Will Become Your Best Friend

By: Gregg Eshelman

Gregg Eshelman — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 07:02:00 +0000

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.

By: Gregg Eshelman

Gregg Eshelman — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 06:55:00 +0000

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…

By: MrZip

MrZip — Fri, 24 Aug 2012 00:40:00 +0000

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!

By: mmseng1

mmseng1 — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 20:31:00 +0000

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.

By: zzzz

zzzz — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:25:00 +0000

Already done this way long time ago.