Press This doesn't pull the post URL, only the title

[silvio-meter]

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Go to Settings > General > Writing, and enable "Press This".
2. Open any post and click on "Press This" (without highlighting anything).

What I expected to happen

This should open up the Editor inside a pop-up with the post/page URL added inside the post body.

What actually happened

Only the post title is pulled, not the URL itself.

Screenshot:

[donalirl]

Follow-up with any updates #4084045-zen

[kosiew]

Thanks @silvio-meter , @donalirl for highlighting this issue.

I tested and see the same issue on both AT and simple site.

[nickpagz]

FWIW, I also ended up doing some testing on an Atomic site for a user where the button does not work at all for them, and I noticed if I highlight some text before clicking on the Press This button, the highlighted text along with the url is inserted as a quote block. So in this regard, it seems to work as described in the instructions shown in Settings > Writing, ie Use Press This to clip text, images and videos from any web page.

[arthur791004]

@nickpagz Yeah, I agreed with you. I think the original design is that you need to highlight the text before clicking on the Press This button as the description said. Maybe we should update the description to ensure people understand that they have to highlight the text before clicking Press This button. Or we should assume the user wants to highlight all of the pages without highlighting everything. @silvio-meter How do you think?

[nickpagz]

@arthur791004 I think an update to the messaging would be better. Tbh, clicking the Press This button without first highlighting text as a way to copy the entire page content is poor form, IMO, and akin to copying content, even if there's a referral link (which the user may be able to remove before publishing anyways?). Just my 2 cents.

[arthur791004]

@nickpagz Yeah, I agreed! Do you have any idea about the new copy?

[jordesign]

Is another option to just include the URL of the page as the fallback? It wouldn't be copying the entire content of the page - but it would at least form a post with a Title and Link to the reference page?

[arthur791004]

@jordesign I think it's great! We just need to let the user know that the default content will be the URL if they don't highlight any text.

[marutim]

A similar issue was reported. In this case, neither the post title or post URL was displayed.

I was able to replicate the same steps.

Screenshot:

Chat: 30692153-hc
Follow up ticket: 4281629-zd

[kosiew]

The important step that is often overlooked is to highlight some text before clicking on Press This.

From the documentation:

... highlight the text you want to grab with your cursor, then click the Press This bookmarklet in your browser. A pop-up publishing window will appear.

Source: Using Press This

If the bookmarklet javascript is amended to check selection text, to pull in title when selection is blank, this will work

Excerpt:

javascript: (function (e) {
  var t,
    n = document,
    s = window,
    a = s.getSelection,
    o = n.getSelection,
    i = n.selection,
    r = n.location;
  t = a ? a() : o ? o() : i ? i.createRange().text : 0;
  if (t.toString().length < 2) {
      t = n.title;
  }
...

[jordesign]

So my thoughts here are 'why don't we do both'? Can we

• Improve the handling of situations where no text is selected - so it pulls in the URL as a link/reference?, AND
• Improve the wording of the instructions?

The wording in the support doc is pretty good:

Simply highlight the text you want to grab with your cursor, then click the Press This bookmarklet in your browser. A pop-up publishing window will appear.

• https://wordpress.com/support/press-this/#using-press-this

Compared to the instructions in Settings > Writing:

Drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.

I feel like the instructions in the settings could be extended a little more to explain:

• adding the button to bookmarks bar
• Selecting text and using the bookmark.

We could also include a link to the full support doc there.

What do you think @kristastevens ?

[arthur791004]

Improve the handling of situations where no text is selected

I think one way is to show an alert to tell our users to select the text. But we cannot show i18n in this case. So I still prefer to notice our users by improving the wording. Also, we can use URL as a default link/reference if our users don't select any of them.

Improve the wording of the instructions?

Maybe we can step-based approach to guide our users on how to use it? For example,

Here are a few steps to clip text, images and videos from any web page

1. Adding the button to bookmarks bar. You can drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.
2. Selecting text, images, and videos you want to clip. If you don't select any of them, we would use URL as default text.
3. Clicking the Press This bookmarklet in your browser. A pop-up publishing window will appear.

[kristastevens]

In looking into this I tested Press This by highlighting some copy and clicking the bookmarklet. A new post modal appeared with the copy, the post title and a clickable URL back to the original post. 👍

Here's the original copy explaining Press This in Settings > Writing:

Press This is a bookmarklet: a little app that runs in your browser and lets you grab bits of the web.

Use Press This to clip text, images and videos from any web page. Then edit and add more straight from Press This before you save or publish it in a post on your site.

Drag-and-drop the following link to your bookmarks bar or right click it and add it to your favorites for a posting shortcut.

Here's some proposed copy that includes an explanation of what it does and (hopefully clearer!) steps on how to use it. Let me know what you think!

---

Press This allows you to copy text, images, and video from any web page and add them to a new post on your site, along with an automatic citation.

How to use Press This

• Drag and drop the "Press This" button below to your bookmarks bar, or right-click the button to copy the link, then add the link to your favourites.
• Highlight the text or item you'd like to copy into a new post.
• Click on the "Press This" bookmarklet / favorite.

---

[jordesign]

That copy looks brilliant to me - thanks Krista

[arthur791004]

Looks good to me too 👍

[arthur791004]

Improve the handling of situations where no text is selected - so it pulls in the URL as a link/reference?

@jordesign Do we still need to handle this part?

[jordesign]

Hey @arthur791004 - I'd love to have that happen as a fallback - but I don't imagine it is vital. If we've got higher priority things - then I think updating the wording would be sufficient.

[arthur791004]

@jordesign @kristastevens I've created a PR to improve this one and here are the results

Press This Description

Situation where no text is selected

press-this-demo.mov

[kristastevens]

Hi @arthur791004, looks good to me, except for a typo I made.

Please change "favourites" to "favorites" in the first bullet point. (A British spelling variant crept in. Sorry about that!)

[arthur791004]

@kristastevens Okay, thank you!

[arthur791004]

@jordesign @kristastevens This change is shipped!