Yes, that's the most common response. I've heard stories about "how wonderful when you can select everything" multiple times, and that's, of course, just shows how human rationalization works.
And yet, this "feature" or "UI choice" is not even a choice. It's just a byproduct of using the wrong stack for the task. Like, nobody ever sat and asked, "Do we want our apps to have everything as a selectable feature?" before shipping this "feature". It just happened, and then, of course, millions of humans, having no actual choice over it, naturally rationalized that as a "wonderful" feature.
It didn't "just happen" the early architects of the web designed a system to make it easy to share and remix content and subsequent generations of companies and their UX designers have so far failed to fully claw back user freedoms.
Content as in significant text and media content, not selecting the text off a button element. I agree, seems like this is just a post facto rationalization of a mistake from a system that was originally designed for content, not application functionality.
Maybe I need to copy-paste the text from the buttons so I can accurately ask which one I should click. Maybe I have a screen reader that needs to access that text to read it out loud. Maybe I want to copy-paste the UI elements into a translation program so I can understand them in my own language. Maybe I want to copy the UI text so I can make a better re-implementation of your site...
Those are some of the most niche use cases I've ever heard, and that is stretching it even on HN, much less anyone in the non HN bubble. Things like screen readers work just fine on non browser apps that don't have selectable text, for example.
Copy-pasting UI elements to ask for help on support forums is absolutely not a niche use case. You're asking for a world of even more terrible screenshots in support channels. Truly cursed software.
Who exactly is copy pasting UI elements? I have literally never heard of anyone copy pasting UI elements of all things over just taking a screenshot of the page, so please provide an actual example. And even if you were able to copy and paste, how would you preserve the layout of the UI since only text is selectable?
Yes, that's the most common response. I've heard stories about "how wonderful when you can select everything" multiple times, and that's, of course, just shows how human rationalization works.
And yet, this "feature" or "UI choice" is not even a choice. It's just a byproduct of using the wrong stack for the task. Like, nobody ever sat and asked, "Do we want our apps to have everything as a selectable feature?" before shipping this "feature". It just happened, and then, of course, millions of humans, having no actual choice over it, naturally rationalized that as a "wonderful" feature.