1880457 - HTML Datalist field not working after last update

Status: UNCONFIRMED

(Core :: Layout: Form Controls, defect)

Description

[martin189901]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/115.0

Steps to reproduce:

Used a roll20 character sheet that uses datalists for dropdowns. this has been working for months.
Created a new form field for use with a datalist and again the list didnot appear.

Actual results:

No dropdown option were available, the field just remained as a standard text field.

Tested the form in Chrome and it worked correctly.

Expected results:

A dropdown list should have appeared on entering the blank field.

Comment 1

[Mayank Bansal]

Can you attach a minimal testcase to this bug?

Comment 2

[Mayank Bansal]

Also it looks like you are using Firefox115, which is older version. Can you update Firefox to the latest release version and check if that fixes the bug for you.

Comment 3

[martin189901]

That was my first thought, but when I went to run the update it said I was uptodate. (I know its an old machine)
Tried on another (newer) computer this time it was Firefox121 installed, the same issue was present.

Can you explain what you mean by "minimal testcase" to attach. do you want me to create a basic HTML form and send that?

Comment 4

[Mayank Bansal]

(In reply to martin189901 from comment #3)

Can you explain what you mean by "minimal testcase" to attach. do you want me to create a basic HTML form and send that?

Yes, please attach a HTML file that exhibits the bug.

The devs can use that HTML fir further analysis.

Comment 5

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to martin189901 from comment #3)

That was my first thought, but when I went to run the update it said I was uptodate. (I know its an old machine)

(Maybe this Firefox 115 installation is on the ESR channel, i.e. extended-support. That would explain why it's locked on version 115, which is the current ESR release. Anyway, that's not important at this point, if you're seeing this in newer versions as well. Though note that Firefox 121, the other version you mentioned, is also a few weeks out-of-date. :) Firefox 122 is the current release, and 123 is going out next week.)

Can you explain what you mean by "minimal testcase" to attach. do you want me to create a basic HTML form and send that?

Alternately (if it's more doable), you could provide a public URL that reproduces the issue, and/or steps that we could follow to reproduce this, starting from a fresh roll20.net free account. e.g. I just created an account, clicked to create a character ( https://app.roll20.net/characters ) . I clicked through to the Dungeons & Dragons character-sheet-creator but didn't notice anything obviously broken (or different-from-what-I-see-in-Chrome), and I don't see any datalists in the DOM. Could you help me find the part of the site that reproduces the issue?

Comment 6

[martin189901]

Sorry I was away for a couple of days.
the following site
https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tryit.asp?filename=tryhtml5_datalist
shows the datalist element not working in firefox but it does work in chrome.

Comment 7

[Mayank Bansal]

Attachment: FF Vs Chrome.png

I see the dropdown working on both Nightly and Chrome.
What Chrome does extra is the "inverted triangle" when you click on the field that provides a visual clue that there is a dropdown available.

:dholbert, should Firefox also add some visual clue?

Comment 8

[martin189901]

You used to get some feedback indicating it is a dropdownlist. When you clicked in an empty datalist field it expanded to show the list. Users now have no idea there is a list of options available until they start typing.
With chrome hovering over the list displays a down arrow to give the user an idea there is more.
please give the users some idea there is a list of options for the field.

Comment 9

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

(In reply to martin189901 from comment #8)

You used to get some feedback indicating it is a dropdownlist.
When you clicked in an empty datalist field it expanded to show the list.

Are you sure?

Testing some older Ngihtlies (e.g. v97, 110, 115) and current Nightly (v124), I see the dropdown appear if I click in the empty textfield when it's already focused. (i.e. click the field, and then click it again. The first click can be replaced with tab or other actions.)

I'm not seeing the dropdown appearing right-away on the first click in any builds that I've tested yet.

With chrome hovering over the list displays a down arrow to give the user an idea there is more.
please give the users some idea there is a list of options for the field.

This might be a reasonable thing to request, but I'm not clear on (& can't reproduce) there being a behavior-change that happened here. If you're sure that behavior changed and you can provide some confirmed "good" version and some confirmed "bad" version (ideally with exact steps to trigger the different behavior, if it's more than just "single-click the textfield"), that would help clear up that aspect.

Comment 10

[Daniel Holbert [:dholbert]]

Stepping back a bit: for textfields, datalist is just a means for a web developer to provide autocomplete suggestions, using the same autocomplete service/UI that the browser might normally show for e.g. saved address/name/etc. info.

The interaction to trigger the autocomplete dropdown is the same as for the browser-builtin saved-form-data autocompletion; and in Firefox's case, that interaction is clicking the textfield while it's already focused, or pressing downarrow while it's focused (among other actions as well). I'm not aware that this interaction has changed recently, but if it has it would be useful to identify the change/range-when-that-happened.

RE comment 7 and whether-to-display-a-dropdown-arrow, that seems to be tracked in bug 1575444 (see bug 1575444 comment 3 in particular). Unless there's been a behavior-change here that we can identify, it might make sense to just mark this as a duplicate of that bug.