1703504 - browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll=false has no effect since 75b1

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 1621570

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[mark_ivo]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:72.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/72.0

Steps to reproduce:

One click on Url/Search input field to set cursor at certain position.

Actual results:

Whole field get selected

Expected results:

Set cursor at certain position

Let's make me something clear here. Because this issues has been addressed more then one's. Reasons like, other platforms use the same behavior or its hard to test disable options or its easier for people with special needs are unsubstantiated. In all of computer uses there is no single input fields with this behavior or any need to. Users that are keyboard oriented simple use CTRL-L or CTRL-A. And with mouse use its simply click-swipe-release, or combination, click, CTRL-A and typing. Its such an intuitive action that the ClickSelectAll annoys people so hardcore that the get frustrated at using FF or any other app that has this behavior. For sure, most people don't care, or don't think, o this is pretty stupid. The just act as it appears. Because most people don't thing what is most useful for them. Also, users at different platforms, -used to- or require different behavior.

Do developers at FF really think the ClickSelectAll behavior is an upgrade to the user experiences? Is it really a thing that users came up with? That people complaining, I'm so frustrated to select the whole text field i just typed to input an new one. Where in practice its more often edit its content rather than type an new one doesn't seem to care. This 'feature' looks like an nice to have feature that has no benefit and just frustrate some power users that use computers in a more hardcore way. No fanciness, no "smart" input fields, no fading screens. Fine to implement, but please make it optional!

Comment 1

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Firefox::Address Bar' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please revert this change in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 3

[zakius]

as you can see this is broken and should be reverted, I wonder how many reports you need to understand that

Comment 4

[mark_ivo]

@Robert Longson, can you please make an reaction on my questions? It's frustration to make effort to point something out and get flushed with the notification "WONTFIX". Please listen to arguments of user who think with you.

Comment 5

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away Apr 25 - May 5)]

I may be wrong, but I think Robert is just part of the community and trying to help us keeping bugzilla sorted and ordered.

I wontfixed bug 1621570 and all the discussion and reasoning is publicly readable there. At this time we have no news about this matter.

Comment 6

[zakius]

all regressions should be fixed immediately, there's no point in arguing about that, of course that requires effort but why not just put time into work instead of defending bad decisions?

Comment 7

[mark_ivo]

@Marco Bonardo, i read it all. And the main reason i found for the decision to remove it is because of testing "complexity". I can't reconcile that with all the other settings, even the ones that are less useful. Beside that, i still can't find the answer why this behavior is invented at the first place. Such unexpected behavior is nowhere created to any other input field, it make no sense. And again, people who don't think about this user experiences also don't care. The used it as it occurs. Please listen to the power users that made FF where it stands now. With all the customizability that it had.

Comment 8

[mark_ivo]

Has this issue made it to some developers? Why is it still impossible to disable this hateful feature?

Also good to mention, it looks like developers miss the fact that users like me still benefit from a separated search bar beside the address bar. By doing so my search input keeps in the input field so i can tune it when searching stuff. As already explained it is extremely frustrating to get an ClickSelectAll effect on this field.

Please make it optional again!