I think it would be really cool if web browsers would allow me to select cells in a HTML table in a logical way: The same way cell selection works in Microsoft Excel. All browsers that I know about presume I'm selecting a \"text blob\" and that means if I click in a table cell and drag downwards, it will include the entire next row of the table in my selection. But 99% of the time, I'd really like selection in HTML tables to work at the cell-level (that means dragging down would only select the cell underneath the initial one). <\/p>\n
I'm too lazy to look at what the HTML 4.01<\/a> spec say about this \ud83d\ude09 Is selection forced to treat things like lines of text? If so, what about the WHATWG HTML5<\/a> spec? If so, can the revitalized W3C HTML Working Group<\/a> do something about this in the next spec? Thinking about it a little, it doesn't seem like it's necessary to specify anything about selection in the specs, the browsers should be free to implement things as best they see fit.<\/p>\n There would also have to be a way to select an entire row or entire column in the HTML table too (use Microsoft Excel or Microsoft Word's table as a starting point for how that UI should work).<\/p>\n What would this mean for copying\/pasting though? If I select two cells aligned vertically in a table, would it paste it as plain text with a newline between the contents? I'll let the smart people deal with that...<\/p>\n [Update: Ian Hickson<\/a> pointed out that Ctrl+drag is the way to do what I'm after in Firefox (too bad it doesn't work in Opera). However, I later commented <\/a> that the pasting in such circumstances poses a problem. Looks like Bug 236546<\/a> is the key to my happiness, go vote!]<\/i><\/p>\n