Hard agree. I'm not dyslexic, but I also occasionally mark text to keep progress, especially if it's a long piece. And if I really want to copy that text, I will, sometimes just out of spite that you're trying to outsmart me, and I'm more likely to leave your site sooner too.

Also, while we're at it, can you please leave scrolling behaviour alone and not override it? I have a nice mouse that lets me scroll as fast or as slow as I want to. In some rare cases with a fancy UI where one wheel notch scrolls a whole page I agree that overriding the behaviour is warranted. In all other cases just FUCKING LEAVE SCROLLING AS IS (as handled by the OS and the browser) and don't try to be fancy; if you try to be fancy for no particular reason, I'm more likely to leave your site ASAP rather than prefer it over other sites.

Also please stop using light colored text on light colored backgrounds, it's a stupid idea. Thanks for your attention.

Isn't it amazing when text is also not selectable? Like its rendered behind some other shit?

I fucking hate websites ❤️

For PC, extra functions should be in the context menu in my opinion. For mobile, that's a little tougher, but maybe tapping on the selected text should bring up the options? Selecting on mobile is a tough thing anyway, and any solution is probably going to be a problem for someone else.

Actually, that's probably true for any UI design choices. There are some that are generally a good idea (like defining a reasonable navigation order for your elements or making design respond to viewport sizes to ensure that everything actually fits), but interaction options can get really muddy.

Come to Japan where they like to make everything images instead. Can't select it, can't copy it, can't translate it without a camera, can't preview the text of something, is bad for accessibility, etc.

UI designer/developer here. One who works on features that facilitate reading.

Based on their writing style and the text highlighting habit, this person is likely dyslexic. I've helped create functions that facilitate this behavior, which is better suited as a mode that can be enabled manually. There are browser extensions that can do this sort of thing for you. I've worked on a lot of assistive reading features.

If this was set as a default behavior, most users would fucking riot. Most of them are using text highlighting for what this person doesn't want to do.

Edit - I think I need to emphasize that this is based on real data. A shit ton of it. These decisions aren't made based on vibes. If the user base is performing a specific action repeatedly, we're going to facilitate it. We can see what you all are doing. UI's aren't built around a bunch of conflicting edge cases based on anecdotes. If something performs a certain way, at least major applications, it's usually because a lot of direct observations and metrics have strongly indicated that this is the preferred approach.

Admittedly, sometimes business goals get in the way of that. But if those business goals we have to push get in the way of conversions, they get abandoned pretty quickly.

My absolute biggest gripe about the failings of proper UI design is icons with no text attached.

Floppy, okay surely the save button. Some book looking thing, no fucking clue. An eye in the middle of a square, what the fuck are you people doing???

Having to hover over a weird looking icon to MAYBE gleam some sort of information on it takes so much longer than just having the fucking text below the God damn icon. Sometimes they don’t even have hover text! Thats GREAT UI skills there, Junior! Maybe you’ll get there eventually!

Fucking idiots.

Modern UI designers don’t have a fucking clue.

You’d think the first principle would be “don’t break the existing fucking UI”, but no.

Infinite scroll. Windows without toolbars. Replacing context menu with useless site-specific one. Forcing links to open in new or same tab, depriving the user of choice. Blocking text select. Blocking copy, as if that’s somehow going to stop people from stealing your shitty content. Fucking with the browser history.

And then there’s the constant reinventing of the wheel. How many times do we need to implement a fucking checkbox?

No lie, I’ve actually had designers come to me with a concept for “a visual indicator that shows the user how they are progressing through the page”.

I do this. It’s just a stimming thing while reading web articles and I hate being sent to Twitter or whatever for it.

I have a deep hatred for modern designs. Especially Material and Adwaita. There's SO. FUCKING. MUCH. WASTED. SPACE. Early 2000s Winamp on my 1024x768 monitor had more concise and legible information than Tidal and Spotify do on 1440p fullscreen. It legitimately pisses me off.

I use a system at work that is 100% web based. I have 2 4k monitors in my desk. Why are the apps formatted for viewing on a phone? I've gotten to the point of hacking the CSS on every page just to make things usable.

At the last version upgrade, the developers made some changes to the interface. They couldn't be bothered to change the existing CSS, so they just put !important on all the new stuff.

We went from using no punctuation to using too much. I struggled while reading this.

I get unreasonably (okay, reasonably) upset when the simplest way to share an image is to take a screenshot of the image.