This was made by ( +KevinKwok on Google+), and Guillermo Webster.Įarly in October 2013, coincidentally less than a week before I developed the first prototype of this extension, xkcd published a comic (shown on the right) which somewhat ironically depicts the impetus for the extension. Right-click and you can erase the words from an image, edit the words, or even translate it into a different language. Hit Ctrl+C to copy the text, where you can paste it into a search bar, a Word document, an email or a chat window.
You can drag over a few lines and watch as a semitransparent blue box highlights the text, helping you keep track of where you are and what you’re reading. You can watch as moving your cursor over a block of words changes it into the little I-beam. Interaction with this second type of text has always been a second class experience, the only way to search or copy a sentence from an image would be to do as the ancient monks did, manually transcribing regions of interest.
Words on the web exist in two forms: there’s the text of articles, emails, tweets, chats and blogs- which can be copied, searched, translated, edited and selected- and then there’s the text which is shackled to images, found in comics, document scans, photographs, posters, charts, diagrams, screenshots and memes.
