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Comment on Ask HN: Why is WolframAlpha serving rendered text images instead of plain text?

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How strange... from their FAQ (under Web and other Practicalities - http://www.wolframalpha.com/faqs.html):

"Do I need images enabled in my browser to use Wolfram|Alpha?

Yes. All its output content is rendered as images, for consistency."

Perhaps they didn't want to make sure the data was styled & displayed well in all browsers (ahem... ie6)?

clickable: http://www4d.wolframalpha.com/Calculate/MSP/MSP6202195gdebi6...

While consistency is a good thing, it comes at a relatively high price in this case. Many blocks could be rendered just fine using only HTML and I'd be a much happier user if I could copy text from the search results.

Indeed. FYI, if you click on any text in the search results, you're given a text field with its text within it. It's a few extra clicks, unfortunately, but at least they considered that.

Did they just add that now? I don't remember seeing the hand cursor over text fields a couple of hours ago.

It was there yesterday

I'm not too sure. I just discovered it a few minutes ago. :)

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