The HIG on Extending Text Selections

The text selection behavior Pierre Igot is complaining about in the aforelinked piece is exactly the behavior recommended by the HIG:

If no text is selected, the extension begins at the insertion point. If text is selected by dragging, then the extension begins at the selection boundary. For example, in the phrase stop time, if the user places the insertion point between the “s” and “t” and then presses Shift–Option–Right Arrow, top is selected. However, if the user double-clicks so the whole word is selected, and then extends the selection left or up, it’s as if the insertion point were before the “s.” If the user extends the selection right or down, it’s as if the insertion point were between the “p” and the space after the word.

In other words, if you create a selection using the mouse and then extend the selection using the keyboard, it doesn’t matter whether you created the selection by (a) dragging left-to-right, (b) dragging right-to-left, or (c) double-clicking. In all three cases, the selection is unanchored in terms of extending it using the keyboard. I agree with this.

★ Tuesday, 28 April 2009