The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Trouble selecting text with iPad

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Trouble selecting text with iPad

I’m running  iOS 12.11 on an iPad 10 Pro. For months now a problem has popped up. If I select a single word in a reply post and then drag to select additional words, the selection jumps to the entire paragraph. No matter what I do I am unable to select a smaller portion of the text.

NOTE - an example of this issue would be where I wanted to make bold only 3 words in a paragraph. 

any help appreciated.

Dan

Danni3ll3's picture
Danni3ll3

Haven't found a solution to it yet! I think it’s something in the forum software. Funny that it wasn’t an issue before. 

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

It really is inconvenient. I like to select certain text to bold, etc.

I don’t think I’ll get Floyd involved. I don’t want to place a burden on him.

I’m thinking this happened when an upgraded iOS came out, but not at all sure.

Danny

David R's picture
David R

... this forum's text boxes have some useful features added - certain kinds of automatic formatting etc - that, while intended to make it easier to use, could potentially also clash with automatic functions newly added by your phone.

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

David, what newly added forum features are you referring to? As far as I can tell the formatting options for the post replies have remained the same for quite a while.

The selection problem only started a few months ago.

Thanks for helping.

Dan

David R's picture
David R

...was my guess. The forum seems to have enhanced features compared to some other forums, but I don't think forum features have been changed.

 

I'm imagining a situation in which an iOS feature and a forum feature are both trying to do a similar kind of clever trick at the same time, and ending up in a cyber-tug-of-war over which one gets to... hold the remote control. ?

foodforthought's picture
foodforthought

Using ~2-year-old iPad with 12.1.1 and I’m seeing similar behavior. Select one word and attempt to drag selects to end of para. Can’t seem to grab either handle(?) after that selection. Agree this is not a behavior I’ve seen elsewhere???

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

I may have found a solution. It will involve editing the HTML source code, but it shouldn’t be difficult. Here is bold text. Danny

To bold the text, I clicked the “<>” button on the edit bar. Then the HTML code appeared. I copied the code below so you can see what it looks like.

<p>I may have found a solution. It will involve editing the HTML source code, but it shouldn’t be difficult. <b>Here is bold text.</b> Danny</p>

Notice the “<b>Here is bold text.</b>”. This is where I edited the code to make the text bold. If you know a little HTML this is a viable work around.

Danny

foodforthought's picture
foodforthought

Hah! No question that editing the HTML would be another way to skin that cat, but...

What happens if you make a typo(s) in the HYML tagging process...are you stuck with the same annoying selection bug? Cursor insert and delete then retype is kind of kludgy if functional. I thought the whole point of flexible selection in the first place was to improve and expedite the writing/editing process.

There's just something hinky in this forum platform which may not have anticipated mobile devices??? I have noticed other strangeness wen accessing FL from my iPads.  Guess we live with it unless platform admins can apply a fix. For the record, I'm making this second comment from my desktop iMac and the issues are not obvious here.

No argument. Just laughing at the lengths we go to... 

Thanks for the grins,

Phil

DanAyo's picture
DanAyo

Phil, the owner and site admin for TFL is Floyd. IMO, he has done an outstanding job with the forum. He has a full time job and does this in his spare time.

I hesitate to get him involved because I’m sure his time is stretched thin. I really appreciate Floyd. If it were not for him, where else could we go to get this type of help and comradery?

Many years ago I built websites. Browsers and operation systems can be a real pain.

It is amazing the lengths we are willing to go :D

Danny