HN Explorer

Am I the Only One?

7 points by iostream24 ↗ HN
Am I the only one who can program computers and stuff, but has difficulty selecting or editing text on a mobile phone?

I just spent 2 minutes trying to edit a url I mistyped in my iPhones url bar… I’m probably the stupid one , but how much time are we collectively forced to waste due to UI design that some humans thought was good for everyone but don’t function for everyone or maybe even most of the people or maybe even anyone but the QA people?

Trying to edit a single letter in the middle of a word? Do they have a course for this? Maybe some post-doc work?

I have three broken Android phones here attesting to it being a biplatform issue. I can’t imagine trying to use a virtual terminal on this gadget without taking servers down or wiping the root partition by accident…

I refuse to accept age related excuses as I’ll contend that it’s empirically difficult to edit text in a mobile browser url bar given a phones keyboard. Am I the only one?

6 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] thread
Jtsummers
Long press the spacebar in the keyboard, the keyboard display will change, then you can move your finger side to side (and up and down if it were more than one line) as if it were directing a cursor. This has been a feature for several years now.
ss108
I also have immense difficulty doing basic text ops on mobile phones.
slater
Dunno if you know, but two useful things to know about text editing, at least on iPhone:

- press and hold lets you (eventually, give it a sec) move the cursor around

- press and hold space bar on the on-screen keyboard, then move (while still pressing the space bar!) left or right allows finer setting of the cursor

teledyn
A thank you to those who posted tips, although I do wonder how we are expected to know this! How did you all find out?

I do find these things go out of their way to /not/ offer what Buxton called a "self-revealing interface"; most of the apps I use don't even have a basic help page or even a legend for special symbols on their display!

Maybe it really /is/ a generational thing. I recall being similarly amazed when my gradeschool son demonstrated (matter of factly) the 'hidden' chambers full of coin in Commander Keen, like jumping in a tunnel because, you never know, the ceiling might be an illusion, and kids think the character's cringe and bleep of hitting a hard ceiling is funny. They were priming my kids...

"I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone."

- Bjarne Stroustrup, inventor of C++

Jtsummers
I don't recall where I learned it, but I just downloaded and checked: It's in the Tips app that comes installed by default on every iPhone. But it's probably like a lot of other things I've learned about computers over the decades, I probably just tried something to see what would happen. It was that, or I read it in the short features guide they include with every phone before tossing it into the bin.
iostream24
Thanks for the tips below.

I never would have guessed that a key press was involved.

I’ve used a smart phone since they came out.

I have never played a video game in my life, however, but do use gui computer software too, and am familiar with the changing web idioms…

But this one is new to me.

Press and hold space bar. New trick. Cool. Thanks