New York Times’ double click dictionary
While reading an article on NYTimes.com, I discovered a handy little feature that I never really noticed before. When I double clicked on a word to highlight it, a pop-up window appeared with a definition. At first I was annoyed to have a pop-up appear, but once I figured out what was going on, I started to like it.
What it does
In the body copy of an article page, if you double click on a word to highlight it, a pop-up window appears with information about the word from Answers.com. You’ll get a definition, pronunciation and synonyms.
Usability concerns
Anytime the page is programmed to do something outside of normal browser functionality, you run into some usability concerns. Often, I will highlight text so I can copy and paste it somewhere and this script may get in the way of that. The New York Times has minimized that from happening by making the script only activate when you double click on a single word.
Most of the time, I’m copy and pasting a whole sentence by clicking and dragging the cursor to highlight the text and this action won’t trigger the script. I rarely highlight a single word except for certain occasions where it’s a long, unfamiliar word or a name I want to be sure to spell correctly. In those occasional times, the script does get in the way, but if I click and drag to highlight, instead of double clicking, it doesn’t.
Despite that one small problem, I find the script to be pretty helpful and do more good than bad. I’m glad it’s there and consider it to be a handy feature that I’ll use.
How to block the script
If you still can’t stand this “feature” and want it off, you can disable it by blocking the specific script that runs it:
/js/common/screen/altClickToSearch.js
Some options are:
- Firefox – AdBlock Plus
- Opera – Opera’s built it content blocker
- Safari – Safari AdBlock
- any other content blocking software
Comments // What has been said about this entry
I discovered this feature by accident too. I love it! I think I even looked up the word “apostasy”, as in your screenshot there. Abandonment of a strongly held belief or a cause, yeah? :P Such a good feature, because vocab expansion is so good for your brain, and it’s too easy to just gloss over them while you’re reading a piece. I think this also encourages journalists not to dumb things down for an online audience. Great job by NYT, I think.
This “feature” is the single greatest web annoyance I have ever experienced. Thank you for showing me how to disable it!
I often double click on a word to start a “ruler” of marked text. I then ctrl-click to mark the following line(s) to help me read online.
The NYTimes double-click pop-up thing got in the way of doing this easily. If I want a definition, I can go to a dictionary site on my own.
Thanks for showing us which script we had to block. I found that “feature” extremely annoying. I compulsively highlight text with the cursor and the pop-ups kept on appearing.
I agree with the previous 2 readers. For what it’s worth, if you are on a Mac, you can invoke the same functionality by hovering over any word and pressing CTRL+COMMAND+D (sometimes I have to press it twice to get it started)… why the NYTimes felt it was necessary to build this into their website is beyond me.