Ask HN: Why it is difficult to copy strings from web pages?

9 points

a year ago

Maybe it is just me being delusional, but I found it more and more difficult to copy strings, especially substrings from web pages.

Example:

Click this link (https://github.com/torvalds/linux/pull/1115/files#diff-821e5c0c63b06b94e7d7a562e03e7b0c6c633b21f0e0ef82c9c9e80a1df4b304) and tries to copy "namespace" from the "ipc/namespace.c". I couldn't do it.

Yes I know there is a "Copy" button to the right side of it -- but I don't want the whole path. Plus, the real issue is not with the Linux repo, because most of its filenames are short anyway, but with my work repos, where you can get "dir1/dir2/abc_def_ghy.yaml", and I only want the "abc_def_ghy" part.

I think the problem is that -- there are too many clickable items on web pages nowadays. If it's clickable, users can't click in the middle without opening something.

What do you think? This has been a constant minor frustration for me for a long time.

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