When I started teaching myself to program computers, I had to have a book. Radio Shack had a great book that came with their TRS-80 micro-computers (they were called micro-computers back then). It was simple, well sequenced and funny. Apple IIes came with a book, but not so good. Learning PHP and MySQL also required books –– really thick ones.
It’s different today. Anything I’m trying to get a computer or a web site to do, someone else has already tried and succeeded, and with the help of others who have already tried and succeeded. Today, you simply tap into the conversations that they had, and you learn as well. The result has been an expansion of knowledge about coding and an explosion of ideas for how to use that coding.
Anyway, I’ve been working for a number of months on one possible feature for Citation Machine that I suspect could greatly improve its functionality. I’ve seen it before on other sites, but could not figure it out in such a way that it would work on all major browsers and both platforms (haven’t tested Linux yet).
It may sound trivial, but if all you had to do is submit a citation form and then simply press CTRL-C to copy the citation, and then CTRL-V to paste it into your document – well I think that’s huge. Until now, you had to click into the box for the citation, and then double click or triple click to select/highlight the entire citation, and then CTRL-C and CTRL-V to move it into your document.
Now, thanks to the conversations of dozens of programmers who are better than me, you just submit the form and CTRL-C for the bibliographic citation. To get the footnote you can double or triple click there, or click the [Select] button beneath it to have it selected/highlighted so that you can CTRL-C. Same with the parenthetical citation.
Please comment if this causes any problems for you.