If you're that worried "<p> hold shift to select more than one item.</p>" isn't a whole lot extra to add and is something most people can handle.

You think people actually read what's on the screen...?

Never done tech support I take it!

So how do you expect them to use your product if you strawmen them as people incapable of reading?

Because they’ll only read what they believe is essential to their goal. Small text below a form element does not scream “critical” it doesn’t get read. I’ve watched many users use websites: they only read what they think is important and skip everything else.

Not just naive users either. I am very computer literate and yet I find myself in situations where I've skipped that text and only find it when I go back.

It makes me think when I'm designing things. If I have problems with stuff like that, how can I make it better.

Really, if people read everything they'd never get anything done. They see dozens to hundreds of things marked visually as important that they'll do fine ignoring, every single day. Of course they often miss the one or two per day that they actually needed to read.

Then there's the way styles are so different, especially on the web. Horribly user-hostile. How does this site mark something as important, assuming it bothers in the first place? Who knows. And if I'm only planning to be on it for 30s, I'm not going to learn that.

>. And if I'm only planning to be on it for 30s, I'm not going to learn that.

It's a standard UI control and it is used pretty often.

I guarantee you fewer than 50% of people who use a desktop computer at least once a week know how to multi-select and range-select using shift and ctrl on them, though. That's why you need the text—which many will, for reasons that are actually pretty good, ignore.

Or you could just use a better control.

It is standard but it is not used often. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw one used that want some ancient, intranet application built on Cold Fusion.

Many users don’t even know you can use a key shortcut to copy/paste.

A good designer designs for reality, not their ideal head canon of how people /should/ behave.

No, we should stop dumbing down UIs to the lowest common denominator because that's how you get user-hostile software that treats users like sheep to be herded and monetised.

The less you encourage learning and self-improvement, the less it will happen.

You get user hostile software that treats people as sheep to be herded and monetised because of the capitalisation of software, not because designers are making their interfaces too easy to use.

Don't blame designers for that, blame VCs and Silicon Valley.

Probably wouldn’t be a great fit for touch or screen reader interfaces, though.

Touch screen OSes usually have their own implementations.

Which frankly is the best argument FOR using the built-in multiple select, since the custom widgets often fail on touch.

Some users don't know what key "shift" refers to.

"* Command-key on MacOS that's the one that that has a ⌘ on it btw"

"‡ On a phone or tablet or whatever, ignore us, we're just confusing you."

How do I do it on my phone or tablet?