Thinkcorps

I am a bit slow and just noticed the NYTimes pop-up contextual search. When you double-click on an item in the text, a pop-up search window appears.

Problem is, we already have a well-defined context for selecting text using double and triple clicks, which this feature breaks rather dramatically with the sudden appearance of a pop-up window.

My other problem is that it seems dubiously useful to be able to search on only one word—and that’s all a double click can possibly get you. I suppose there’s some other hidden methods that also activate this feature, but I’m not going to stumble around blindly for them.

When you’re the paper of record, don’t you think the breadth and depth of your coverage might necessitate readers using something more advanced than single word search queries?

Does Khoi Vinh know about this, has he mentioned it already I wonder?