I wish it were easier to select text with the mouse.
On "complicated" web pages, tiny changes in the position of the mouse while dragging (selecting text) can result in large changes in the selection (the parts of the page highlighted in light blue). Sometimes a tiny change in mouse position even causes a whole 'nother column of text to be highlighted.
It sometimes takes many tries simply to select the contiguous words I want to copy. It sometimes takes planning and learning from experience. I would prefer for selecting text with the mouse to be so easy that I can always keep all of my planning and learning faculties focused on the ideas discussed on the web page.
Even on pages (such as the page where this comment will appear) where selecting text with the mouse is relatively straightforward, I would prefer to be able to select a contiguous series of lines (or paragraphs if individual lines is too hard) by dragging in the left margin the way that it is possible to select a contiguous series of lines in TextMate 2 or in Sublime Text 3 by dragging in the gutter (the left margin where the line numbers appear). (Neither Firefox nor Chrome lets me do that with HN's pages.)
In general, I would prefer for my browser to be optimized for "active reading" or "reading broadly understood" (reading plus related activities like copying a short passage from a web page and pasting it into a text editor).
I would probably make heavy use of such a "browser optimized for reading" even if it barfed on "complicated" web pages (i.e., failed to render all or part of pages that use a difficult-to-implement modern web API) provided there were an "Open in Firefox" or "Open in Chrome" item on the right-click menu whenever the mouse is over a link -- or some similar easy-to-implement convenience.
In other words, I think I'd use it and love it even if it was unusable with most pages on the modern web as long as it provides a good experience on certain sites with relatively simple pages, like HN and Wikipedia.
On "complicated" web pages, tiny changes in the position of the mouse while dragging (selecting text) can result in large changes in the selection (the parts of the page highlighted in light blue). Sometimes a tiny change in mouse position even causes a whole 'nother column of text to be highlighted.
It sometimes takes many tries simply to select the contiguous words I want to copy. It sometimes takes planning and learning from experience. I would prefer for selecting text with the mouse to be so easy that I can always keep all of my planning and learning faculties focused on the ideas discussed on the web page.
Even on pages (such as the page where this comment will appear) where selecting text with the mouse is relatively straightforward, I would prefer to be able to select a contiguous series of lines (or paragraphs if individual lines is too hard) by dragging in the left margin the way that it is possible to select a contiguous series of lines in TextMate 2 or in Sublime Text 3 by dragging in the gutter (the left margin where the line numbers appear). (Neither Firefox nor Chrome lets me do that with HN's pages.)
In general, I would prefer for my browser to be optimized for "active reading" or "reading broadly understood" (reading plus related activities like copying a short passage from a web page and pasting it into a text editor).
I would probably make heavy use of such a "browser optimized for reading" even if it barfed on "complicated" web pages (i.e., failed to render all or part of pages that use a difficult-to-implement modern web API) provided there were an "Open in Firefox" or "Open in Chrome" item on the right-click menu whenever the mouse is over a link -- or some similar easy-to-implement convenience.
In other words, I think I'd use it and love it even if it was unusable with most pages on the modern web as long as it provides a good experience on certain sites with relatively simple pages, like HN and Wikipedia.