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Wandering electrons... but not too far

Like free electrons, but with less direction

Opera tips and tricks: double, triple and quadruple clicking

Saturday, 4. October 2008, 09:24:57

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As I'm sure all you Opera technophiles know already, David Pogue has a blog at the New York Times called Pogue's Post. Today he put up a post entitled, "Tech Tips for the Basic Computer User". You'll probably know already most of the things that David talks about in the post, but it's a good read anyway, and you never know what little nugget of information you may discover.

For example, I was skimming through the comments and I stumbled on one from "dg" who points out that triple clicking and quadruple clicking might be interesting to try, in addition to double-clicking.

In Opera "out of the box", this has a really handy effet:

A double-click selects the word:


A triple click selects the sentence:


And a quadruple-click selects the paragraph:


When I test this in IE7, Firefox, and Safari, they behave as Microsoft Word does: double-click selects the word and triple-click selects the paragraph; no apparent 'click-able' way to select a sentence. Is there something that has to be checked or unchecked in these other browsers to achieve this very logical functionality or is Opera the only browser developer that's thinking clearly? Do leave a comment if you know how to make this happen in other browsers (Not that we Opera users really care but hey, it's always good to know).

What's too bad is that indeed this extremely logical click-to-select sequence doesn't exist in Word. As I just said, there you double-click to select a word, but triple-clicking jumps directly to the entire paragraph (like in IE7, Fx and Safari). To select a sentence in Word, you Ctrl+single-click.

One might argue that the other browsers are behaving like Word, but this does not seem to be the case. Indeed Ctrl+single-click does nothing in Fx and Safari and in IE7 it selects the entire paragraph.

Anyhoo.

So there you have it folks; yet another reason to use Opera: logical click-to-select sequences.

Enjoy!

Acid 3 as of 09/09/2008Opera tips and tricks: Opera tools and toolbars 101

Comments

dantesoft 4. October 2008, 15:33

you never know what little nugget of information you may discover

or what random myth, like "You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser".

That's one reason people don't like Opera, when it's following standards, not the crowd (so it won't load <http://parliament.uk/>): wrong opinions about how it should work. People might like Opera in the triple-click case, though.

Wandering electrons 4. October 2008, 16:57

or what random myth, like "You don’t have to type “http://www” into your Web browser".


Point taken. But I think that kind of thing is REALLY rare these days.

(To clear up a bit on datesoft's example, if you type just "parliament.uk" or "http://parliament.uk", the site won't open in Opera, IE7, or Safari (Fx does open it), but if you type "www.parliament.uk" or "http://www.parliament.uk", it will open everywhere.)

I just typed about 20 web addresses (pulled randomly from my head) leaving out completely the http://www" part and all of them worked in both Opera and IE7 (I didn't test in Fx or Safari). But maybe I just got lucky. I'd be interested to hear how frequently people are still running into sites where typing the "www" is obligatory. Readers?

That's one reason people don't like Opera, when it's following standards, not the crowd (...): wrong opinions about how it should work.


Uuuhm... that argument is just so 90s. With all due respect, may I remind you that everybody, but everybody, is now working toward the best W3C compliance that they can muster (some muster better than others), even Microsoft with Internet Explorer 8.

dantesoft 4. October 2008, 18:55

But maybe I just got lucky.

OK, so http://nasa.gov/ is rare. The point is that a fundamental information given about how the web works is FALSE. Good luck building up anti-phishing practices on that, when e.g. the certificate is issued to the www site, instead.

everybody, but everybody, is now working toward the best W3C compliance that they can muster

Let's just wait for IE8 to come out. And then wait some more for when the top 5 browsers display a standard HTML 4 page the same.

Wandering electrons 4. October 2008, 21:16

Dantesoft, my friend, my buddy, my pal, it seems to me that you might have given yourself a divine mission here that might be better served on your own blog.

I've acknowledged that your point was correct concerning the "www" at the start of the url, and thanks for the second example.

As for the implication of cross-browser web standards, or the precision of the comments in Pogue's post, well, that has absolutely nothing to do with this post here at Wandering electrons, so, let's nip that one in the bud. This post is about a neat Opera functionality: double, triple and quadruple clicking to select text.

Let us know if you decide to post on your own blog about web standards or the relative merits of commenter's at Pogue's post. :idea:

edvakf 5. October 2008, 05:04

My favourite one is Quadrueple click on a 
 element, which will select the entire pre region. This makes it very easy to copy a source code.

dantesoft 5. October 2008, 10:05

you might have given yourself a divine mission

Sure, someone is wrong on the Internet.

I've acknowledged that your point was correct

I guess I expected you to edit your post and mention a warning about the advice in Pogue's post itself :smile: Sorry to have hijacked your thread on a secondary issue.

Wandering electrons 5. October 2008, 10:17

Sorry to have hijacked your thread on a secondary issue.


No problemo :cheers:

darumaki 19. February 2009, 18:08

selecting sentence, paragraph in Opera won't work if you have it set to use the "double click to display contextual menu", this sucks :cry:

How to use Quote function:

  1. Select some text
  2. Click on the Quote link

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