1777837 - Using Ctrl + Del on highlighted text only deletes the highlighted text, not the entire word

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: DOM: Editor, defect)

Description

[temporaryemail213696]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:102.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/102.0

Steps to reproduce:

This one's pretty obvious. Any sort of text box in firefox will do (one that you can type in).

1. Use Ctrl + F and type in what you want to find. (e.g. "tena" in tenacious)
2. Click anywhere in the text box and start using Ctrl + G to highlight instances of the text in green. (e.g. "tena" in tenacious is now highlighted in green)
3. Use Ctrl + Del to delete. (e.g. "tena" is now deleted when the entire word "tenacious" should have been deleted)

Actual results:

Using Ctrl + Del only deletes the highlighted text (e.g. "tena") instead of the entire word (e.g. "tenacious"). This began happening to me with Firefox 102.0.

Expected results:

Whereas before, using Ctrl + Del when "tena" was highlighted would delete the entire word (tenacious), which is the desired result and what would normally happen when I used Ctrl + Del. Experimenting, it seems that this is now the default behavior for highlighted text in general, which seems incorrect to me because using backspace for highlighted text already performs this function, so Ctrl + Del should not be doing the same thing if this was an intentional change.

TL;DR: Ctrl + Del should delete the entire word regardless of the text highlighted and NOT only the highlighted text because backspace already performs this function.

Comment 1

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

I couldn't manage to reproduce this issue on my end. Ctrl + delete deletes the entire word.
Can you please try to narrow down a regression range using the mozregression tool since I can't reproduce the issue? https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Thanks.

Comment 2

[temporaryemail213696]

I think a really easy way to reproduce this issue is to take a word, preferably a long one, and highlight a few letters in the middle. Using Ctrl + Delete will only delete those letters. For example, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious". Type this word into any text box, highlight ten letters in the middle, and use Ctrl + Delete. The entire word does not disappear, only the highlighted letters.

What should be happening (and what used to happen) would be that even though you highlighted only 10 letters in the middle, the entire word was deleted when you used Ctrl + Delete.

The important thing to remember is that you need to highlight some text (hold LMB and drag over a few letters). Ctrl + Delete works normally if you don't highlight any text.

Comment 3

[temporaryemail213696]

(In reply to Hani Yacoub from comment #1)

I couldn't manage to reproduce this issue on my end. Ctrl + delete deletes the entire word.
Can you please try to narrow down a regression range using the mozregression tool since I can't reproduce the issue? https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Thanks.

I used the mozregression tool. Keep in mind that I know basically nothing about computers, so I can't interpret this much, but what it gave me was:

2022-07-23T14:05:54.477000: DEBUG : Found commit message:
Bug 1457149: Make Ctrl+Backspace behavior on text editor in Windows during text selection the same as other OS. r=masayuki

Differential Revision: https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D146392

2022-07-23T14:05:54.477000: DEBUG : Did not find a branch, checking all integration branches
2022-07-23T14:05:54.479000: INFO : The bisection is done.
2022-07-23T14:05:54.480000: INFO : Stopped

Comment 4

[temporaryemail213696]

(In reply to Hani Yacoub from comment #1)

I couldn't manage to reproduce this issue on my end. Ctrl + delete deletes the entire word.
Can you please try to narrow down a regression range using the mozregression tool since I can't reproduce the issue? https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Thanks.

Bisecting on mozilla-central [2021-11-01 - 2022-05-30]
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-02-14 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-04-08 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-04 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-17 (verdict: b) ❌
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-11 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-14 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-16 (verdict: b) ❌
Tested mozilla-central build: 2022-05-15 (verdict: g) ✅
Bisecting on mozilla-central [ea021836 - fb6a807e]
Tested mozilla-central build: ddbf2ba9 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested mozilla-central build: 738cf94f (verdict: b) ❌
Bisecting on autoland [45cbf7a9 - 46fce4bc]
Tested autoland build: c7e356cf (verdict: b) ❌
Tested autoland build: a7b35c78 (verdict: b) ❌
Tested autoland build: f18e01f0 (verdict: g) ✅
Tested autoland build: 7357f3be (verdict: g) ✅
Tested autoland build: 9482edb5 (verdict: g) ✅

Comment 5

[temporaryemail213696]

(In reply to Hani Yacoub from comment #1)

I couldn't manage to reproduce this issue on my end. Ctrl + delete deletes the entire word.
Can you please try to narrow down a regression range using the mozregression tool since I can't reproduce the issue? https://mozilla.github.io/mozregression/

Thanks.

https://hg.mozilla.org/integration/autoland/pushloghtml?fromchange=9482edb5ae0757718b145020c0d938cdbe9d68ed&tochange=a7b35c78db9d6c8670c84614298f6fbe5dd3ad4a

Comment 6

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

The Bugbug bot thinks this bug should belong to the 'Core::DOM: Editor' component, and is moving the bug to that component. Please correct in case you think the bot is wrong.

Comment 7

[Hani Yacoub, Desktop QA]

Thanks for the regression range, I'll set this bug as new.

Comment 8

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

Set release status flags based on info from the regressing bug 1457149

Comment 9

[Hsin-Yi Tsai (she/her) [:hsinyi]]

Hi Daisuke,
This looks a regression from bug 1457149. Can you take a look? Thanks.

Comment 10

[Daisuke Akatsuka (:daisuke)]

Thank you very much for letting me know.
Yes, this is intended behavior.
In bug 1457149, we made the behavior of Ctrl+Del match with Firefox on other OS and other browsers such Chrome, Safari and so on.
If we need to support the previous behavior, may need to introduce a preference for it.
Masayuki, do you think we should support this? What do you think?

Comment 11

[Masayuki Nakano [:masayuki] (he/him)(JST, +0900)(Away until 6/30 except 24)]

Cannot the users who want to take back the traditional behavior fix this issue with setting layout.selection.caret_style to 1?

Comment 12

[Daisuke Akatsuka (:daisuke)]

Thank you, Masayuki-san!

Yeah, right!
After settinglayout.selection.caret_style to 1 in about:config page, then restarting the browser, the behavior will revert to previous one.
temporaryemail213696, could you try it?

Comment 13

[temporaryemail213696]

(In reply to Daisuke Akatsuka (:daisuke) from comment #12)

Thank you, Masayuki-san!

Yeah, right!
After settinglayout.selection.caret_style to 1 in about:config page, then restarting the browser, the behavior will revert to previous one.
temporaryemail213696, could you try it?

I tried this and it worked to restore the previous behavior. I am grateful to all of you for helping me to resolve this issue. Maybe it would be better to make this setting more obvious by putting it in about:preferences, but because this is a niche feature that not many people care about it is also okay to leave it in about:config. Maybe an informational page on how to switch this behavior can be created on https://support.mozilla.org.