P.S. That's not my hand. No, seriously, I found that hand on the Internet. No one uses a mouse any more, least of all me, but the message calls for that kind of archetypal imagery.

Amen, brother. I've been complaining about this very thing.

I completely agree with you.

Everyone makes fun of my OCD highlighting and clicking, but my problem never bothered me until NYT.com initiated that stupid feature (which only helps the world's laziest internet users.)

Now I print out long articles because the website is such a pain.

Wow. I seem to have either cured myself of this habit, or not visited nytimes.com since they implemented it. But yeah, this is bad... real bad -- almost as bad as the snap.com popups on all wordpress.com blogs.

Wow. I seem to have either cured myself of this habit, or not visited nytimes.com since they implemented it. But yeah, this is bad... real bad -- almost as bad as the snap.com popups on all wordpress.com blogs.

You'd think someone could at least create a Firefox extension to neuter the click function...

brava. like i said earlier, i'm totally snagging "screensifting."

oh, and snap.com is the devil.

What I want to know is, why does Jennifer 8. Lee have a period after the "8"?

Is "8" the initial numeral of some longer number?

I hadn't noticed that the NYT had started doing this, because I'd already fixed it for some other stupid site.

1. Use firefox
2. Install the Adblock plus extension
2b. Optionally, install filtersetG updater to keep other ad defs up to date (won't help with this, but handy anyway)
3. Add a filter to adblock to block:
http://site.answers.com/main/js/*

I often feel left out of discussions when people start talking about really annoying things on the web. Either I've never seen the annoying thing at all, or at most, saw something like it once and never again.

Oh I'm totally the same way, in fact I started reading your article and got to the second paragraph and it was half-highlighted. The nytimes double-click has been bugging me the past few days, thanks for alerting the world to our shared plight.

Oops, to update the above, the url you need to adblock is:
*.nytimes.com/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js

The url I gave above will block the annoyance on most sites, but you'll need this one for the Times.

i've never known anyone else who did this, but i'm glad to know i'm not alone. and yes, the Times has been driving me nuts this week. thanks for fighting the good fight.

You can also use the very helpful NoScript Firefox extension to prevent sites from running unwanted JavaScript on your computer. The vast majority of JavaScript does annoying or useless things like loading ads; for that which is necessary, NoScript provides a simple whitelisting interface.

I had never noticed this before today, which means that I might be only a highlighter, not a double-clicker. Still, what a stupid feature.

Amen. Of course it's possible to get around this "feature" but I think the point is that it's borderline INSANE to have it as a default setting. What do you think the ratio is of "people doubleclicking because they think a definition will pop up" to "people who accidentally or unconsciously doubleclick and are appalled at the pop-up window"? Stop the madness, Grey Lady.

Thanks for writing this!

MikeJ -- You are my favorite person ever. I figured Adblock could probably make it go away, but I couldn't figure out what to block.

John Emerson -- Wikipedia knows everything.

I click, double-click, drag, and highlight words. Any and all words, whole blocs of text, I don't care. Idly but mercilessly, and according to rules of symmetry and aesthetics so sure and precise I won't detail them now, I highlight and grab and drag sentences, even whole paragraphs...

What would Yossarian do?

Or you could just not compulsively double-click on the text that's on the screen. Scroll like a normal person and your problem is solved.

This has been driving me crazy. Please, Martin Nisenholtz, save us from this infernal javascript.

Am I the only person who doesn't do this? Why would you doubleclick for no reason? You people are all nuts.

Someone in Yglesia's comment thread made some sense to me- in Word and even moreso in design programs like Quark/InDesign, editing is often much simpler by double-clicking to highlight words or blocks of text. Maybe it's just a carryover thing. Or maybe, Sommer, maybe... we're all crazy.

I don't see this "feature" at all. Maybe that's because I'm on a Mac with Safari and I use PithHelmet for adblocking. If I want a definition, I can highlight the word and use the contextual menu Dictionary built into MacOS X.

And yeah, I also like to highlight text sections while reading. On a huge screen like my 30inch Cinema Display, it makes it easier for my eyes to track where I'm reading. Sometimes on long articles, I highlight a section to mark where I stopped reading, then come back to finish it later.

My name is Kid Charles, and I'm a habitual click-and-highlighter.

Seriously, I've got this same disorder and the nytimes site drives me nuts. I'll have to try the firefox fix mentioned above.

I do the same thing and noticed the nyt website was pissing me off. So I fixed it.

1 - get greasemonkey (firefox plugin)
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/748/

2 - install this script
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721

earl

I'm hoping that this feature will allow the NYT to start writing for a 10th grade audience, now that the slow kids can have their big words spoon-fed to them.

But like Sommer, I'd no idea that they had this feature until today. Are all the cool kids on teh bogs double clickin' these days?

Given that you Generation Y-bother morons are dumb enough to think the Seventies were cool and the fashions didn't suck, the fact you're stupid enough to be a "habitual screensifter" isn't at all surprising.

Hey Governess—one of MY's commenters applies SCIENCE:

"It is a pretty common UI gesture dawning from the very early days in GUIs to double-click on a single word to select it, and then *without releasing the mouse on the second click*, drag-select. This allows one to select sentences, paragraphs etc (anything starting on a word boundary) *without having to aim* for the exact first character in the passage (see Fitt's Law). It's tremendously valuable (particularly in web browsers where selection behavior is kinda funky), and lots of people do it even without thinking. The Times's 'feature' breaks this workflow for negligible added value."

Does Nabob have a law? No, I didn't think so.

Traditionally, Fitts' Law is only applied to first-time or untrained movements. Hand or mouse motions that have been practiced over time and have become habitual are not described under the Law, if understood in its original formulation.

All this nerd-talk has sent me into a jock-rage. I don't need any laws to pummel on someone's face, do I?

Wait, wait, Gp. I'm still stuck on this lil nugget: somewhere out there in internet land, someone assumes I think the Seventies were cool.

Hi -- I wrote a greasemonkey (firefox plugin) script that stops just this bit of the javascript on the NYT web site from running.
http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/7721

ps -- I think I submitted this before and it didn't get approved? Dunno why.

earl

Earl—Thanks, I published your original comment. My spam filter caught it for some reason.

Woah -- what's the point of clicking as your reading? Why is your pointer or mouse even near the words? I guess I find this so strange because I've never even THOUGHT about doing this. Perhaps this is a laptop thing. Something I don't have and have never actually used. (I've never been able to justify the cost of ownership to portability factor, but then again, I don't even like having a phone and leave my cellphone at home all the time.)

This is all fascinating.

That being said. This "feature" of NYT.com doesn't seem to work at all in Safari. So I guess once again a Mac has saved me from the perils of the world.

Hey '74, sorry that I only just fished your comment out of the spam folder. But hey, I'm a Mac user, too—just a recent Firefox convert. And when I use a mouse, I still click around—I'm just annoyed that I'm using a mouse instead of my unfamiliar trackpad. And I hate phones, too. See? It's an affliction that can affect people like you!

Wow, I thought I was the only one who did that!

BTW, any time a Snap window pops up, in the upper right corner there's a disable link - it'll let you disable it for the site or for the entire web. It's cookie-based, though, so if you clear your cookies you'll have to re-disable.

Thanks to you and all of your posters, this has been making me crazy! Your page was the first link I clicked on and it solved my problem completely!

Yes! Random clickers, unite! This so-called "feature" is driving me insane.

This NYtimes feature drives me crazy... haha. Thanks for the adblock code, it works great. ;)

Thanks for all these links. I'm a habitual random clicker, but it also seems like the NYTs is a bit broken. About 10% of the time when I click "next page," their script does a search for "Next Page" and returns the closest matching result, which means I've seen the biography of "Walter Hines Page" about 300 times!

Yes, I hate the nytimes for taking away my obsessive double clicking. Thanks for the fix!

I am THRILLED that so many others share my compulsion! Now I have a NAME for it - thanks!

dBkwBy it`realy.... good info.... imho

I'm way behind here. I read NYTimes online pretty regularly and only just yesterday discovered the double-click thing. I understand that it doesn't appeal to everyone, but I LOVE it, and I doubt I'm alone.

I spend about 14 hours a day online, many of them reading articles from different sources. I often grab words and open another browser window in order to look them up. This saves me the hassle.

I didn't have any trouble highlighting text to copy and paste a quote into an e-mail once I thought to be careful to avoid double-clicking. But I don't do what you seem to do in order to follow text online. I'm sure it's annoying for those who do.

I think it's a cool feature and give it a thumbs up.

Just thought I'd point out that there is no one universal user. Different features appeal to some and irritate others.

cheers.

Help! I can't do it, I've plug that script into the adblock but no change. I'm using Firefox 3.0.1

It looks like they've changed the default behavior. Now, highlighting or clicking brings up a little popup javascript bubble, which can itself be clicked for "additional information."

Not quite free clicking... but significantly cheaper.

kH1WCY

SuuhTd

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The New York Times does this so they can make extra money each time someone clicks on one of their ads. Apparently the money they make publishing their Newspaper isn't enough.

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Corey

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Thanks for the adblock code, it works great

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