113537 - withold "select by click" while holding down a special key

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Other Applications :: DOM Inspector, enhancement)

Description

[andreww]

Many times elements can only be displayed after certain events happen - 
say clicking on a menu to display menuitems.  So choosing a dom 
element via a "click" sometimes will not work. 
Proposing that in addition to allowing someone to select a dom element 
via a click, to select/inspect an element after some countdown has 
occured.  

This is analogous to programs which do screenshots which allow a user 
to count down a set time - which allows them to set up some conditions.

Comment 1

[Joe Hewitt (gone)]

this is interesting, but I think it would be more effective if you could just
hold down a key to prevent selection from happening until you released the key.
 that way you could inspect inside of popups, which is what I think you are
looking for here.

Comment 2

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

So if we were to choose a key, the most likely candidates are ctrl, shift, or
alt.  However, pressing those while clicking may lead to other behaviors.  I
think Andrew's idea of a timeout makes the most sense, unless we want to have a
list of triggers that a user can choose from (similar to PaintShop Pro, I'm
told).  Using a timer will be more work than just checking for a key press, but
it should be the most failsafe...

Comment 3

[Christopher Aillon (sabbatical, not receiving bugmail)]

Mass re-assigning bugs to [e-mail]

Comment 4

[Colby Russell :crussell (no longer Mozilla-ing)]

Here's what I'm thinking:

Keep the current select by click behavior.
Augment it by making the select by click state ternary instead of the simple on/off:
 - Select by click is off
 - Select by click is on
 - Select by click with modifier is on

Clicking the select by click button in the toolbar[1] or the menuitem would cycle between these states.

For select by click with modifier, we'd continue to install the listeners as usual, but ignore clicks that didn't occur with whichever modifier we choose.  The modifier should be configurable as well, for obvious reasons.

This sidesteps the problem mentioned in bug 201827 and comment 2 that would occur if we took the approach from comment 1, and isn't as finicky as something user timers.

A tri-state select by click mode might be weird, though.  So we could keep the on/off approach, but replace the on state we have now with one that uses a modifier as described.  In this case, one of the modifier options would include "None", which would also be the default.

1. In the tri-state approach, we could allow quick access from the off state to the third state by jumping to it if the configured modifier is held down when the toolbar button is clicked.

Comment 5

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk close. This component is no longer supported or maintained.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1499023

Comment 6

[Firefox Bug Husbandry Bot]

Bulk close. This component is no longer supported or maintained.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1499023