125695 - [URL bar] Mousedown+drag should select part of URL (doubleclick selects entire URL)

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 62495

(SeaMonkey :: General, defect)

Description

[Peter Lairo]

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; de-AT; rv:0.9.8+) Gecko/20020211

URL bar selection should be more intuitive and conform to expected OS behaviour.

The current default behaviour of the URL bar text when selected (i.e., one click
selects entire URL) is unintuitive and is very labor (and nerves) intensive when
trying to select a *part* of the URL (which I do MUCH more often than select the
whole ULR).

Current Steps to select part of URL:
1. click in URL-bar (entire URL is selected).
2. pause a few msec
3. click again somewhere in URL
4. pause a few msec (otherwise the whole URL will be selected again - ARGH)
5. click at start of selection and drag to select.

There are too many steps involved, and steps 2 and 4 make it an excercise in
precise timing, and, on (all too frequent) failure, frustration (hardly
conducive to good workflow).

My suggestion is to make the following user.js workaround the *default*:

** Desired Default *************************************************
* // Do NOT select the entire URL when you click in the URL bar.   *
* user_pref("browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll", false);              *
********************************************************************

This allows easy selection of parts of the URL, and is much more conform with
the way text selection is done in most regular applications (e.g., WordPerfect,
Word, notepad, etc.).

To select the entire URL, all the user has to do is double-click on the URL -
this is what he would expect to do anyhow (again, like in other apps), and is
hardly too much effort to expect, especially in comparisson to the hoops one has
to jump through (see steps 1-5 above) to select part of a URL.

Comment 1

[John Levon]

On linux, yesterday's CVS, a single click does not select the entire URL,
only a double click. I don't have such a pref set...

os -> winnt ?

Comment 2

[John Levon]

see related bug 62491 and the meta bug its dependent to.

Comment 3

[Christopher Hoess (gone)]

->UI

Comment 4

[Ben Ruppel]

This is madness.  They can and probably will make it so an immdiate click-drag
will select a portion of the urlbar without selecting the entire thing.  I
suggest wontfix.

Comment 5

[Peter Lairo]

Yes, that's the idea (click-drag selects part of URL). That way both
possibilities receive the maximum accessibility:

  1. doubleclick  = Select entire URL

  2. click & drag = Select part of URL

By giving the "select entire URL" function just one click less (single-click
selects URL) would cause an increase of 4 clicks to the "Select part of URL"
function - hardly a balanced solution. Therefore this bug is valid.

PS. Maybe this is OS-specific? I am primarily talking about expected behaviour
in Windows.

Comment 6

[Ben Ruppel]

No, what I'm saying is that it should be possible to have a single click select 
the url AND a single click and drag just select a portion of the url.  Right 
now, a single click and drag starts the selection at the beginning of the url 
and ends it where your cursor is.  The reason I said "they can and probably 
will" is because I believe there is already a bug out there with the goal of 
producing this behavior.  I will try to find it.  

Since selecting an entire URL is the most likely goal of a user clicking on it, 
the current behavior is the standard of the major browsers (mozilla, NS4.x, and 
IE).  Discussions about the UI (ie: having the cursor remain an arrow instead of 
a text insertion icon when the single click will select the entire url) have 
indicated that this behavior will remain and be refined.

Okay, the bug I am talking about is bug 62495.
The meta tracking bug is bug 62496

Comment 7

[Peter Lairo]

I see (checked IE 5). I still think this bug's solution is more conform to
expected and actual OS behaviour, in addition to being easier to use.

At a minimum, if the first click is to select the whole URL, it should be
possible to:
- start selecting text immediately with the second mousedown. 
- Also the minimum time between first click and the second mousedown should be
as short as possible (like IE5) ( <= ~0.1 sec. )

Comment 8

[Ben Ruppel]

Peter: I don't think you understand the proposed solution.  The solution will
allow users to select the entire url with ONE click, yet if you click ONCE *and*
drag, you will be able to select a portion of the url with no extra hassle.  See
the rebuttal to your proposal in bug 62495.  This will be the best of both worlds.

Comment 9

[R.K.Aa.]

*** Bug 142166 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 10

[Jesse Ruderman]

>At a minimum, if the first click is to select the whole URL, it should be
>possible to:

>start selecting text immediately with the second mousedown. 
Bug 87410.  See also bug 62495: should be able to drag to select without
clicking first.

>Also the minimum time between first click and the second mousedown should be
>as short as possible (like IE5) ( <= ~0.1 sec. )
Bug 62491.

If you have any other specific complaints about how clickselectsall works,
please file them as separate bugs after checking the dependencies of bug 62496.
 This bug is too messy so I'm marking it as a dup of bug 62495 based on the summary.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 62495 ***

Comment 11

[:deanis74]

v

Comment 12

[Alex Hirzel]

*** Bug 241750 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***