>>> In Internet Explorer (and Microsoft Office apps by default), if you
>>> select across a word boundary, you automatically select the entire
>>> word. [MT]
>> Someone at Microsoft must have thought that was pretty odd behavior,
>> because in IE 5 for mac (which came after the win version), you get
>> the "classic" selection model: select what I say to select. [JF]
> I don't think that augurs anything in particular, since IE/Mac doesn't
> seem to have copied behavior from IE/Windows in anything much (unless
> you count the `Tools' menu). [MT]
I don't think it means much either. (Except maybe that the mac IE team
is smarter than the other ms teams :-) which wouldn't surprise me as I
know several of the IE mac folks.)
I just wanted to point out that we have competing selection models out
there, and in mass market products there is not a clear winner. It's
really because it's a difficult problem to figure out what is best.
> Note that I'm not arguing for word selection (since that is often
> annoying where you want to rearrange the grammar of a sentence, where
> grammar is stored in chunks that don't respect word boundaries), but for
> element selection (which would *help* you rearrange the grammar of a
> sentence). [MT]
This is one of those times where my natural inclination is to agree with
you, but experience is telling me otherwise. If we had a selection
model that snapped into element mode the moment you crossed an element
boundary, it would get in the way of things much like your grammer
example. Just yesterday I was shameless copying ad material from
websites to use to describe games I was selling on EBay, and there was
someting like the following (psuedo html below):
<h3> Mac OS System Requirements
<ul>
<li> blah blah blah
<li> blah blah blah
<li> blah blah blah
I wanted to copy the whole list and the "System Requirements" portion of
the header. I couldn't do that in an auto-element-selectin model. But
it worked like a charm in our current model, and I got just what I
wanted on paste in composer.
I will (again) state that I do think we need some good way to do element
selection. It just shouldn't be automagic. Maybe "option-select".
Maybe an element heirarchy toolbar. Maybe a sidebar. UI folks, give me
some love here! I'm just throwing out ideas.
>
> >...
> > So there are two ways to go:
> >
> > 1) Make a css editor that is the sticky gooey dream of most of the
> > readership here, which is not wysiwyg, but is structure oriented. I
> > agree that it would be a pleasure to maintain a web site with such a
> > tool if well executed.
> >...
>
> My pick is the former.
I think we've all figured that out! :-)
--
jfrancis .com -and- floppymoose .net
@netscape @netscape
