Every once in a while, someone here (and I'm sure thousands of other places on the interwebz) spends several minutes - maybe even longer - composing a long, thought-out, well-reasoned, passionate, persuasive, and insightful essay on some absolutely fascinating topic, only to see it suddenly go *poof* in the process of posting.

I've been the victim of this several times myself.

And the standard response is f it, I'm not typing that all in again.

In many cases, I've found this is due to a "feature" in many browsers whereby the backspace key is a synonym for the "back" button. If you are in a text field, backspace, does just that. It moves the cursor one position to the left and deletes the character that was there. If the cursor is not in a text field, the browser processes the keystroke as the "back" button. If you are not on a modal window, that goes back and you lose everything you entered on that page. In a few browsers, if you are looking at a modal window, it may redisplay the window as it first appeared -- with everything you entered into the fields wiped out. So... type, type type, then if you had just hit tab or clicked anywhere other than a text field... *poof* All your typing... all gone!

What an utterly stoopid idea!

So, I post this, first as a heads-up to anyone who has never discovered this. Second, if anyone knows how to disable this incredibly dumb feature, please let me know.

Many years ago, I even sent a note to Microsoft asking them to change this. Of course, I never heard back.

Ya, that happened to me here just last week, and ya, I did say, no way am I typing (pecking with one finger on this stupid iPad) again.

One of my most hated snafus of modern life. I keep resolving to begin with a word document or email "compose" but - neglect.

I guess most of you know that (at least with MacBook Air) you can often retrieve JUST deleted material by clicking immediately on "command Z". (!!!!)

FWIW One of the worst offenders is right here on WTF. If you notice many of my posts only gradually appear, it's to avoid that hated outcome.

When I begin a post and need to add further thoughts (or even just want to add a link with the URL on top and a DIY headline below), I return to the previous post only to find the whole thing has vanished.

"Solution" (however imperfect) is to post what I have, only to add the rest piecemeal (anyone interested enough to read it, may notice it is edited - and changed - bit by bit). At least, once I post what I start with, that part's preserved instead of trying unsuccessfully to return to the beginning only to see it pop like a soap bubble.

(If you've followed this description) anyone else encounter this disappearing post problem and if so, how do YOU deal with it?

This morning. Grrrrrr.

I've had that happen a number of times. So frustrating!

So, what I do, if I suspect that my brilliant post is getting kinda long, is block and save what I've written to that point (on the Mac it's Command-C) and similar on Windows. At least then I can't lose everything.

I had no idea the backspace button did that.

Learned something! Thanks!

It's happened to me. Not that often, but it's happened. And it's infuriating.

Yeah, when I start rambling off into a protracted essay about something, if I remember to do so, I hit ctrl+a (select all), then ctrl+c (copy) so it's all in the clipboard in case I hit the dreaded backspace. But since I'm usually doing three or four things at once, I'm as likely as not to copy 'n' paste something else when I'm bouncing back and forth.

Now that computers have gobs of memory, it would be nice if windoze had a multi-page clipboard so you could copy several things and the clipboard would not get overwritten by the last thing you cut or copy. I have used applications that do that, but only within that application.

Backspace as "back" may have seemed like a good idea (it still wasn't) back when interacting with the web was mostly reading stuff that other people had created. Today that should be in the box with the 8-tracks and Betamax videos.

BTW, the other keyboard shortcuts you may have never tripped over are alt+leftarrow for "back" and alt+rightarrow for "forward". I use those a lot when I'm perusing craigslist.

There are a couple of things you can do that with on a Mac. Easiest is Notes. If it's open, create a new note, and paste it there.

It's a few more keystrokes.

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
There are a couple of things you can do that with on a Mac. Easiest is Notes. If it's open, create a new note, and paste it there.

It's a few more keystrokes.

I've never used Note...don't even know where it is.

The disappearing post thing only happens to me when I've written out 10 pages of text.

That is what happens to all of my brilliant ideas.

quote:

Originally posted by LL:

quote:

Originally posted by QuirtEvans:
There are a couple of things you can do that with on a Mac. Easiest is Notes. If it's open, create a new note, and paste it there.

It's a few more keystrokes.

I've never used Note...don't even know where it is.

It's probably in your hotbar at the bottom of the screen. It looks like a rectangular piece of white paper with a yellow border at the top. Kind of like a pad of white paper (hence Notes).

If you have an iPhone or iPad, and use iCloud, everything you type into Notes on your computer, or on any iPhone or iPad, will appear on every device within a few seconds. And it can be edited on any of them, and it will then be on all of your devices.

So, you can type a grocery list on your computer, and then take your phone to the store, open Notes, and presto, there's the list.

It's a very primitive app, but, because it's native to all Apple devices, very handy.