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0 pointsmagnio3y ago0 comments

Isn't that a good thing? Text should be selectable and copyable by default, since that does not induce any harm whether the user do it or not, but the reverse is not true.

The number of times a Windows UI shows me an non-copyable error code is vastly greater than the number of times I wish I cannot select any text (which is zero).

0 comments

jeroenhd3y ago

I don't know about the Windows 10/11 UWP stuff, but in any good version of Windows you can hit control+c on any standard dialog to copy the error text and the text of all buttons to your clipboard.

It's a little annoying that you can't easily make subselections in dialogs, but that's been a core Windows UI design element going back to Windows 1.0.

It's a grossly underadvertised feature of Windows and I bet the people reimplementing the Windows UI for the third time in ten years don't know about it either.

blub3y ago

The copied content is often mixed nonsense like a comment combined with a button text.

How often do you want to copy button text like “Ok”, “Cancel”, etc? Never…

jessaustin3y ago

It's pretty handy when reporting an error or bug. Often the text is more involved than ok/cancel.

skinnymuch3y ago

On iPhones at least with latest OS, using built in OCR is supposed to be especially easy now. Maybe that has been exaggerated now, but if it is a one step thing, that could be better than being able to copy as copying stuff sometimes includes things you don’t want and can’t exclude.

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