1727432 - There is no information about mouse shortcut with ability to select text inside link while holding Alt (Option)

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(support.mozilla.org :: Knowledge Base Content, enhancement)

Description

[rakleed]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/92.0.4515.159 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

1. Open https://support.mozilla.org/kb/mouse-shortcuts-perform-common-tasks

Actual results:

There is no information about the mouse shortcut with the ability to select text inside a link while holding Alt (Option).

Expected results:

There is information about the mouse shortcut with the ability to select text inside a link while holding Alt (Option).

Comment 1

[Seburo]

I have just tried this Alt + left mouse text select and I am not seeing anything different to when I normally select the link.

rakleed - please can you provide more information about this shortcut, is there any documentation about it for Linux, MacOS or Windows?

Comment 2

[rakleed]

(In reply to Seburo from comment #1)

I have just tried this Alt + left mouse text select and I am not seeing anything different to when I normally select the link.

rakleed - please can you provide more information about this shortcut, is there any documentation about it for Linux, MacOS or Windows?

Here is the screen recording: https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/19418601/161611978-a6d8916d-e478-47d3-8883-96c72fdd6f9c.mp4

Without holding Alt (Option) I move the link, but I can't select some text inside it. On Windows and macOS, it works the way I described, but I can't test on Linux. I haven't seen any documentation on this either.

Comment 3

[Noah (NoahSUMO/SolidSnake) [:Noah]]

Hey guys,
I can confirm that Rakleed's method of using Alt+Left mouse click can highlight link text for copying the title text rather than the url itself.
I've used this trick countless times & it's a very old school trick. I think it's been around since at least Firefox 1.0 back in 2004 (but I can't test that version to prove it :P).

There are a few sites that list this special method of selecting link text in Firefox. Here's one that explains it pretty well:
https://winaero.com/how-to-select-text-inside-a-hyperlink-without-opening-the-link-in-firefox/

It helps on websites that prevent you from highlighting the link the normal way (w/o holding the Alt key). Although there is a bit of nuance to using the Alt+Left click method as some sites are designed strangely & it takes more effort to make the shortcut work. On the weird sites, you have to start dragging your mouse outside of the link's focus ring to be able to highlight the link text.
See this forum thread & screenshot below:
How to select text inside a hyperlink without opening the link in Firefox
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1268121
Screenshot:
https://user-media-prod-cdn.itsre-sumo.mozilla.net/uploads/images/2019-09-05-11-28-12-d90648.png

For Linux:
Quoted from the WinAero.com article:
Use the Win key in addition to the Alt key:
For Linux, the steps are almost similar, only the modifier key should be different, because the ALT key is binded to window management mouse gestures in most Linux window managers.
Steps:
• Open any web page in the Firefox browser.
• Press and hold down the ALT + WIN keys together on the keyboard and start selecting the text inside the hyperlink by dragging with the left mouse button held down.
• Again, you need to release the left mouse button before you release the keyboard keys to preserve the selection and prevent Firefox from opening the link.

Comment 4

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

Wow, do I learned a lot from this bug report. Never heard about this trick until now.

Thanks for sharing the method, Noah. And good to see you around again, lately. (:

@Seburo can you take a stab on creating a new revision so I can review?

Comment 5

[Seburo]

Done and ready for review - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mouse-shortcuts-perform-common-tasks/history#preview

Note that this has not been reviewed in some time so my edit will sweep up the other un-reviewed edits.

Comment 6

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

I'll try to contact the other contributor with previous revisions before approving Seburo's proposal. Keeping the NI.

Comment 7

[Abby Parise]

Kiki, do you need any assistance here with approving this? Thanks!

Comment 8

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

@Abby: Yes, I'd very much need help on this. There's no problem with Seburo's revision. However, if I approve his revision, it'll wipe the previous multiple revisions from the other contributor, Franz. We can, of course, review them one by one from the revision on Dec 5, 2018. But I don't have the resources to review the technical accuracy for all of those revisions.

Comment 9

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

I believe Franz already incorporated all of his edits in his last revision. I don't have a linux environment to test the accuracy of the edits, so I'll defer it to the others. Let's see if I can pull other contributor with Linux knowledge to help.

Comment 10

[Danny Colin [:sdk]]

revision/241118 mentioning alt + mouse is accurate for Linux by default on most Desktop Environment / Window Managers (GNOME, KDE and other DE based on these two).

It may not be the case for all Window Managers if the user has selected alt as the mod key to interact with system keybindings. However, I'd argue that this is a case where the user is a) aware of the change since they explicitly made it OR b) their window manager should warn them that using alt as a mod can potentially interfere with a lot of applications.

In conclusion, I'd be in favor of merging the revision mentioned above.

Comment 11

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

That's helpful. I'll link your comment on the KB discussion for reference. Thanks for taking a look, Danny. I'll go ahead and approve the revision in that case.

Comment 12

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

I just realize Franz added the following note for linux users at the top of the article, so I think we're good to go:

{for linux} The shortcuts only work if they are not used by the desktop environment or window manager. {for}

Comment 13

[Kelimutu [:kiki]]

We're good here. Thanks, everybody! I'll go ahead and resolve this one.