Snopes.com Can't highlight text - why?

Question

Does anyone know why I can't highlight text when visiting Snopes.com? Give it a try and see if it works for you - This is something that happens on every computer I've visited Snopes from, if I had to guess I'd say 3 or 4, in both Windows and Linux, Firefox and IE.

It's not the main screen, but if you view a topic and/or a legend (any of them, they all do it) you'll see what I mean. This has bothered me for a couple of years now, and I know its not specific to my computer...I just want an explanation as to why.

Answer 1

Looks like they have some script mayhem specifically preventing it.

Check this out when viewing the source:

<script type="text/javascript"> 
<!--
var omitformtags=["input", "textarea", "select"]
omitformtags=omitformtags.join("|")
function disableselect(e){
if (omitformtags.indexOf(e.target.tagName.toLowerCase())==-1)
return false
}
function reEnable(){
return true
}
if (typeof document.onselectstart!="undefined")
document.onselectstart=new Function ("return false")
else{
document.onmousedown=disableselect
document.onmouseup=reEnable
}
-->
</script>

Answer 2

As Dillie-O mentioned, they intentionally prevent text selection. This is annoying for those of us who select text as we're reading.

Getting around this is easy--just paste the following into your browser's javascript console:

document.onselectstart=null;

Answer 3

Because the want to protect their content they do not want it to be easy for someone to take their articles and repost them elsewhere as their own. They want you to share links rather then the text.

Answer 4

I found it easier to just click on edit-->Select All. Copy that, paste it into Word (this might take a couple of minutes), then you can easily copy/paste the text you want without having to worry about all that HTML stuff.

Cheers.

Answer 5

While you are on a webpage on that site with Firefox, go to the Tools menu, select Options and in the dialog box that opens, select the Content tab & there uncheck the checkbox next to Enable JavaScript option to turn off JavaScript & overcome this constraint.

Other browsers will also similar ways to disable JavaScript.

Answer 6

Use the Enable Right Click Bookmarklet. Googleable. or just paste this into the address bar and hit Enter.

javascript:void(document.onmousedown=null);void(document.onclick=null);void(document.oncontextmenu=null);