216583 - Autocomplete should present options in blank textfield (on mouse click).

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 173569

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[Kevin Ar18]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030810 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.5b) Gecko/20030810 Mozilla Firebird/0.6.1+

In a blank text field, the only way to currently bring up autocomplete is to 1.
Press the down arrow on the keyboard or.... 2. Type in the first character or
the first few characters of a word.
What is not available is the option to (mouse) click in the text field to bring
up the autocomplete options.  Mozilla should allow the user to click in a blank
textfield in order to bring up the autocomplete options.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Go to a site with a form (like google.com)
2. Type something in the text field, and submit the form
3. Go back to the page where you submitted the form and place your cursor back
in the text field.
4. Click the mouse key inside the blank text field.

Actual Results:  
Nothing happens

Expected Results:  
Mozilla should show the autocomplete options (all of them).

The reasoning for this is several.
1. The user should be able to navigate the browser features entirely with a
mouse (just as they can do it entirely with a keyboard).  Requiring the user to
mix keyboard and mouse combinations is not a good choise in designing an
interface.  Admittedly, sometimes this is required (and is even useful) in
certain cases, such as the ctrl and shift key for selecting multiple items.
1. Internet Explorer made autocomplete a common practice.  IE allows users to
click in a blank text field.  It's become common practice among users, as a result.

Comment 1

[Vidar Haarr (not reading bugmail)]

 - In order to use form fields, you need a keyboard.
Which renders your 1st reason false.

 - Mozilla is not Internet Explorer.
Microsoft is not the de-facto standard for UI-guidelines. They are, in fact, the
ones - in my opinion - /not/ to follow.
Which, you see - in my opinion - renders your 2nd reason false.

If I utilize my mouse, and left-click inside a textbox, I would do it because I
   1. Want to focus the control, so that I can
      use my keyboard, and type characters in it.
   2. Select the text already present, so that I
      can press the Delete or Backspace key, and
      then proceed with action 1.

Recommend WONTFIX or INVALID.

Comment 2

[Kevin Ar18]

There are times where you can fill out an entire form without the keyboard (and
it's faster than using the keyboard).  In IE, by clicking on a blank text field,
you can select an autocomplete option (all using a mouse); in this manner
sometimes entire forms can be filled out faster than using the keyboard.

Also, implementing autocomplete (as IE does) would not cause a conflict in the
areas you mentioned.
1. In IE, the first click causes focus (which everyone expects). The second
click causes the autocomplete to show up.  Focus is still maintained on the text
field, so there is no conflict in typing text in the textfield.
2. As for seleting text, autocomplete does not mess up any text you select.  It
only presents a menu of other options.  Thus, you can have autocomplete and the
ability to select text at the same time (without conflict).

Comment 3

[José Jeria]

This is firebird specific -> Changing component

Comment 4

[Pham]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 173569 ***

Comment 5

[Simon Paquet [:sipaq]]

verified.