Y'all are nuts. Mice are evil; compulsively clicking and dragging things sounds to me like compulsively scraping your tendons with a dull, rusty knife.
My popup blocker prevents the dictionary from coming up. You can only highlight words through clicking instead of whole paragraphs, but you can still drag to highlight.
1: Yeah. They should up their meds and leave the Times alone. This is the ADA run amuck.
Kevin appears to be taking a shocking pro-pop-up stance.
*raises hand*
Hello. My name is Amanda. I am a compulsive highlighter.
i've always done it! that's why i joined on the campaign.
4: Don't be fooled. He's still pissed that we hooked 'em.
1 and 3: Ridiculous. Seriously—spam, pop-ups, that shit is annoying. Only slightly less annoying than the pop-ups themselves is keeping up with installing every javablockin' widget, when I just want to read the fucking newspaper and click like a spasmo. Spasmo! Just let me be.
The NYT may think that it is doing its readers a service, but it clearly doesn't understand anything about usability (there's a tech word for you Firefox plugin nerds!) if it believes that completely integrated dictionary will actually do the work of hyperlinks. What happens when a writer uses a metaphor? Synecdoche? Clicking on "Philadelphia" in "Philadelphia is making a push to finish .500 at home this season" brings me the wrong information.
1: Quite possibly stupid question, but what's the alternative? A trackball/pad on a laptop? Still calls for clicking, no?
I ask because I've just developed tendonitis.
Never heard of you clickers, though the NYT thing is prima facie obnoxious. What, they think they can't get subscribers because they use big words?
My first reaction to the clicking thing, quite honestly, is to wonder whether reading comes easily to y'all. Do you read quickly/easily in print? I can't imagine having to read slow enough to do this clicking business -- my tendons would scream.
You don't really concentrate on the clicking. It's just something you idly do as your eyes zoom through the words.
Maybe it's just a multitasker thing? I also find I can't usually limit myself to doing one thing at a time. I usually have half a dozen tabs open in Firefox and am switching all between them -- I can't read more than a paragraph or two of any piece before I get restless and switch to another page -- then back after a bit. Seems my brain just needs something to do while reading.
All I know is you obsessive clickers make me feel better about my internet addiction. At least it's not *that* bad.
I can't imagine having to read slow enough to do this clicking business
It's not like we're methodically highlighting each word as we read them, it's more just random clicking and dragging.
Although I believe in the righteousness of our cause, I'm not optimistic about its chances. The snap.com previews on wordpress.com came up for discussion in nerd circles a month ago or so, with the wordpress folks eventually chiming in. The verdict? "We appreciate your concerns. But most of our users are kind of stupid, and they think the popups are neat. So they're staying."
In the NYTimes' case, I'm betting there's some revenue coming in from sending people to Answers.com instead of an actually-useful resource. I bet they'll give us a way to turn the double-clicking behavior off, but that'll still be sort of disappointing.
Man, don't get me started with the evils of 29MB videos.
Delurk:
I too am female, yet a compulsive clicker.
No, it's nothing to do with slow reading, it's just random for me, like for Matt F. In fact I read extremely fast, if my friends' assessment is to be trusted. (Although all that reading has yet to teach me proper comma-use.)
It's not just text, by the way. Faced with an empty desktop, I will select and deselect just to keep my hands busy. "Oh look! I can make squares!"
Rather than tilting at windmills, I offer this suggestion.
Better than pop tarts all over the screen.
I never noticed the NYT pop-up thingy before, but now it's gonna bug the shit out of me.
Doesn't all this compulsive double-clicking result in spyware and ad-downloads? When my touchpad was malfunctioning and clicking on all sorts of things against my will, my browser ended up in all sorts of unpleasant places.
It sounds like you guys need some screen equivalent of a pad of paper for doodling.
Maybe the sites you visit give you spyware. Also, adblock helps with this by deleting most ads that could be clicked on.
It's not just clicking randomly. It's mainly focused on the text.
Well, no, I don't get much spyware, and I run Adblock and AdAware and whatnot. But I still don't go around clicking on stuff randomly.
Don't get me wrong: I support the cause of getting the NYT to provide a "turn this damn feature off" button!
28.---Yeah, but even the NYT is starting to embed more links in their text, with the result that compulsive random clicking on an article about, say, Kazakh oil refining might interrupt your reading by loading a NYT article about, say, a Galliano runway collection with a wacky Kazakh theme.
Okay, that might explain a lot about Sausagely's blogging. Nevermind.
Yes, but links generally look different from ordinary text and you can therefore choose not to click on them.
31: Yes, but ordinary text generally looks different from links and you can therefore choose not to click on it.
Yes, but why would you? It's so delightful.
21: I am a smoker. I sometimes suspect I do it merely to distract myself from wanting to light that next cigarette.
On reflection, Capp's campaign strikes me as Typically Liberal: organize a group of protesters, include a logo. If he'd drunk deeply enough of the New Authoritarianism, he'd have imposed on his friend tom, demanding that he prove he loved America by creating some sort of FF or Stylish addon.
I'm a constant random highlighter, but I very seldom click at random. just another data point. Also, I think the dictionary feature doesn't work on the home page.
Pressuring the New York Times is a time-honored American tradition.
31, 33: You people and your arguments that we can just choose not to click on things. Will no one think of the children?
And what about the grandmothers who don't know how to use computers?!?!
Will no one think of the children?
We'll leave that for the women.
Come on, Teo. You have to think of yourself sometimes.
I'd rather not. I'm not very interesting or sympathetic.
That's gonna make it hard to date, then.
39: Are you calling Armsmasher a child?
Had to delurk. Was seduced by the raptor.
That's gonna make it hard
Quit toying with Teo, Bitch.
Delurking to say I'm a big ol' girly girl, and I highlight randomly *all the time* and the NYT has been driving me nuts. So there.
Of all the bizarre behaviors described, linked, and exhibited here, this is the first one that really made me think, "Terence, that is stupid stuff."