A bug which only affected left-handed users
52 points by FedericoSchonborn
52 points by FedericoSchonborn
So much of the world is right handed. Most pens even have their advertising where it is legible only if held right handed. At least being a lefty carries some innate adblock utility.
oh my god, i never realized that the text on pens and pencils was meant to be readable while holding the pen, and that holding it lefty style means it's always upside down! that's a new one
I tried to think of pens that would match your description and failed. I looked up pictures of pens and still failed, though one was just close enough that it reminded me of one fancy pen that might qualify.
Try Google images of 'promotional pen'. Think less 'fancy pen' and more 'throwaway marketing pen'.
a sinister disposition
Ha! I remember the day that I learned that 'sinister' and 'dexterous' (dexter) literally mean 'left' and 'right,' respectively. I am still intrigued by this cultural-phenomenon-that-we-live-with (viz. deviation from norm -> evil) to this day.
I'm extremely left-hand dominant, but for the few tasks that I can do with either hand, I usually reject the term "ambi-dexterous" and instead describe myself as "omni-sinisterous".
For many Indo-European languages, their word for "right" have a common root while "left" does not 1, which is likely because the original word for left became taboo, and so was replaced with a new word that then later also became taboo, and so on.
Do you know if the likely original, pre-taboo PIE root for 'left' has been reconstructed? I wonder if any attested languages preserve any of its descendant forms.
I'm thinking of this by analogy with 'bear', which (you might know this) also went through a series of taboo formations (like the English word 'bear' itself), but we have a reconstruction of the pre-taboo form from those languages where it was retained (at least as far as we can trace back, who knows if that itself wasn't a taboo form).
Do... people normally only hold a phone in their primary hand? I'm left-handed but hold my phone in either hand about equally at random, and kind of just figured everyone did that.
I'm left handed and nearly exclusively hold my phone in my right hand. The cause is simple: at first I held my phone in my right hand, and used my left hand to interact with it. As time went on, I used my right thumb to do more and more things, until it became the primary interaction point.
Similarly I use the mouse with my right hand because in the computer lab growing up the mice didn't have long enough cable to switch over and use my right hand.
left handed people tend to have a dose of ambidextery, as the world really wants us to be right-handed.
left-handed here, but I also do a lot of things with my right hand, like handwriting. It's also my dominant hand on the piano (although the way most pieces are written certainly contributed to that). and yeah, I use both hands on the phone as well
Right handed here but I use my phone 90% with my left hand, maybe that's why I was so confused.
A data point: I'm definitely faster at touchscreen typing in my dominant hand. I can use either (it's not as hard as handwriting), but for anything more than a glance at the screen or a few swipes, it is more comfortable with my dominant hand.
I'm ambidextrous with a slight bias towards fine motor control on the left and coarse motor control on the right. I tend to hold my phone in my left hand because I use my right hand for mice (experience, not innate bias - I can use either, but most computers I used as a child had the mouse pad on the right and moving it didn't make things better [or worse], so I didn't) and so pick up the desire to use the same hand as my pointing-device hand.
When doing anything more than looking at the screen yeah pretty much only ever the correct hand.
Right handed here, and I use both. I probably favour my right a bit more, but from some quick anecdotal testing I seem to type better with my left hand on my phone than my right (although for anything longer than a couple of sentences, I'll use both thumbs to type).
I at the very least start swapping hands when one of my wrists gets tired of holding the 2026 mega-brick form-factor smartphones. You would think it is more common to at least have tried using both hands even as a "righty".
I use my phone with whichever hand is comfortable to reach for it, which is usually my nondominant left because I keep it in that pocket. It strikes me as absurd that someone's handedness might lead them to prefer a hand for one-handed phone use, because I have no preference at all unlike in most domains. But maybe that too is an accessibility blind spot.
I am right handed and almost exclusively hold my phone in my left hand, so my right hand is completely free to interact with it. I don't know if I just have abnormally short fingers (I don't think so? they look fine), but I find it really awkward to interact with my phone with the same hand that's holding it.
So, if I'm scrolling on my phone, it'll be phone in left hand, scrolling performed with an arbitrary finger of the right hand.
My favourite bit about this is this, from the PR:
AI assistance: No
Tool(s): My brain
Model(s): Late 70s model, well maintained, some cosmetic wear.
Used for: Writing down the problem. Thinking about the problem. Writing the solution.
touchstart was always wrong there.
Space activating a button, that’s keyup for some reason. And unlike mouse, it doesn’t care which element the keydown occurred on.Play with something like data:text/html,<button onclick=this.textContent=Math.random()>One</button><button onclick=this.textContent=Math.random()>Two</button> to explore the possibilities.
It would have been fine to prepare to activate on touchstart, e.g. start fetching some data from the server if needed, but the actual action must not occur yet, which is what element.addEventListener( 'touchstart', clickEvent ); wrongly did.
Interestingly enough, despite being right-handed for almost everything else, I do gravitate towards holding and using my phone in my left hand. I'm not sure why, I think maybe because I keep my phone in my left pocket and my wallet/keys in my right; it feels easier to use keys and pull out my wallet with my dominant hand. I wonder if I'm unusual in this.
I do precisely this, and it is for that exact reason. Phone goes in the left pocket, so withdrawing it means it will be in my left hand.
I end up scrolling and doing basic tasks with my left hand, but typing a long message I tend to swipe-type with my right hand while still holding in my left.
I didn't understand what it has to do with being left-handed though.
Is that some touchpad quirk this mouse user just doesn't understand?
It was a mobile touch event bug which only left-handed users encountered. Right-handed users dragged the screen with their right thumb, so their finger never came near the malfunctioning link.
Thanks, that kinda makes sense but as someone who randomly scrolls with left thumb (70%) or right index finger it just didn't make sense that it's just about the location of a certain link. Maybe too obvious, but also too many assumptions.
It wasn't explicitly stated in the post, but the linked PR makes it clear that it's about touchscreen usage. Presumably on a smartphone.