232321 - Control-backspace doesn't delete words in URL bar

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(SeaMonkey :: Location Bar, defect)

Description

[Jerry Quinn]

User-Agent:       
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.5a) Gecko/20030922 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1

In the URL bar, control-delete erases the whole URL that's been typed so far. 
It's non-intuitive and very irritating.  See galeon for a great example of how I
think it should work.

Bug 98546 seems related.

This issue is present in Firebird, and recent versions of Mozilla.  I can't
easily track down the last mozilla that works correctly.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1.Type a URL such as "http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/enter_bug.cgi?product=Browser"
2. Hit Control-Delete
3.

Actual Results:  
The URL bar clears.

Expected Results:  
The word "Browser" should be deleted.

Comment 1

[Christian :Biesinger (don't email me, ping me on IRC)]

so ctrl+delete should delete the word before the cursor?

Comment 2

[Prognathous]

First, you're using an old Alpha build, did you try this with Mozilla v1.6 Final?

Where did you place the caret before pressing Ctrl+Delete? if it's at the end of
the typed URL, then Ctrl+Backspace should delete the word "Browser", not
Ctrl+Delete.

Prog.

Comment 3

[[e-mail]]

If you have text selected then Ctrl+Delete should delete it by preference
(although currently it doesn't get that quite right...)

Comment 4

[Jerry Quinn]

(In reply to comment #2)
> First, you're using an old Alpha build, did you try this with Mozilla v1.6 Final?

No, I've been using what's available on Debian.  I'm updating to firebird 0.7
right now to try there.

> Where did you place the caret before pressing Ctrl+Delete? if it's at the end of
> the typed URL, then Ctrl+Backspace should delete the word "Browser", not
> Ctrl+Delete.

Sorry.  Yes, I meant Ctrl+Backspace, not Ctrl+Delete.  Summary is now updated.

I'm not selecting text with the mouse, I'm just editing in the location bar.

Comment 5

[Jerry Quinn]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > First, you're using an old Alpha build, did you try this with Mozilla v1.6
Final?
> 
> No, I've been using what's available on Debian.  I'm updating to firebird 0.7
> right now to try there.

Firebird 0.7 has the same problem.

Comment 6

[José Jeria]

WFM, Gecko/20040207 Firebird/0.8.0+, Windows XP

Comment 7

[[e-mail]]

On Linux, word motion only stops at whitespace, but on Windows, it stops at
punctuation. While there is a preference that controls this, it only works if
you edit the default preference file "all.js" ("unix.js" on older versions).

Comment 8

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Make word break pref work

Comment 9

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 140950 [details] [diff] [review]
Make word break pref work

I basically copied code from nsImageFrame.cpp ;-)

Comment 10

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comment on attachment 140950 [details] [diff] [review]
Make word break pref work

Hmm...	So the code in nsImageFrame has a problem, actually -- it's passing an
object with a refcount of 0 across xpcom boundaries.  So is this code.

Comment 11

[Jerry Quinn]

(In reply to comment #7)
> On Linux, word motion only stops at whitespace, but on Windows, it stops at
> punctuation. While there is a preference that controls this, it only works if
> you edit the default preference file "all.js" ("unix.js" on older versions).

Even if this behavior is controllable through a preference, I'd argue that the
default is set wrong and should be set to punctuation boundaries.  Whitespace
boundaries are next to useless for URL editing.

Comment 12

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Addressed review comment

Comment 13

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 140982 [details] [diff] [review]
Addressed review comment

No ref counts, does this make things better?

Comment 14

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comment on attachment 140982 [details] [diff] [review]
Addressed review comment

Um... but how do you clean up that object now?

What this should really do is to observe shutdown like nsImageFrame does and
release the pointer at that point....

Comment 15

[[e-mail]]

Attachment: Another try

Comment 16

[[e-mail]]

Comment on attachment 141174 [details] [diff] [review]
Another try

I think I managed to kill a semicolon too.

Comment 17

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Comment on attachment 141174 [details] [diff] [review]
Another try

There we go.  r+sr=bzbarsky

Comment 18

[[e-mail]]

Fix checked in.

Comment 19

[Vaclav Dvorak]

This is fixed, right? I'm marking it as such, and I'll also dupe bug 193025 to this.

(In reply to Jerry Quinn's comment #11)
> Even if this behavior is controllable through a preference, I'd argue that the
> default is set wrong and should be set to punctuation boundaries.  Whitespace
> boundaries are next to useless for URL editing.

I totally agree, but that's the subject of bug 190615, and it doesn't seem
likely to be resolved to our liking.

Comment 20

[Vaclav Dvorak]

*** Bug 193025 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 21

[Jerry Quinn]

I just tried mozilla 1.7b and control-backspace still wipes the whole URL bar.

Comment 22

[[e-mail]]

Jerry, sorry for not making things clear...

open about:config

filter for stop_at

change layout.word_select.stop_at_punctuation to true

Hopefully this fixes your problem.

Comment 23

[Jerry Quinn]

That's easier than editing prefs.js.  Thanks.

Yes, it does make the behavior work the way it should.  Now to convince the
powers that be that this is the way it should work out of the box...

Any chance that about:config is documented somewhere?

Comment 24

[[e-mail]]

Marking fixed again, because the default pref issue is bug 190615.

What sort of documentation for about:config were you looking for?

Comment 25

[Jerry Quinn]

(In reply to comment #24)
> What sort of documentation for about:config were you looking for?

That it exists?  What it allows you to do, etc.  I just searched the included
help and found nothing about it at all.

Comment 26

[[e-mail]]

about:config wasn't designed as a user tool. It's a bit like regedit.exe in that
respect; although Microsoft now includes help on using it, you still have to
find out for yourself what all the names and values mean. People have created
web pages such as http://mozillazine.org/misc/about:config/ on the use of
about:config although there are extensions available that make it easier to
alter commonly used preferences that aren't listed in the preferences dialog.