254707 - allow disabling of link dragging in order to select link text

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Paul Grayson]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040615 Firefox/0.9
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040615 Firefox/0.9

One annoying feature that would be nice to disable is link dragging.  Let me
just say I find it useless and suspect that many or most other people do as well.

However, I select text from web pages constantly, to copy and paste into emails,
search forms, etc.  Sometimes the text I want to select is in a link.  In that
case, I must be extremely clever to figure out where on the page I can click to
make my desired selection.  For example, on the http://texturizer.net/firefox/,
in the sidebar, try to select the strings "Shortcuts", "Documentation", or
"Keyboard".  You can do it, but it's hard.

I suggest that link dragging should be disabled by default, but enabled via an
extension, preferences panel, or something like shift-click.  Alternatively, for
people who get annoyed by link dragging, please at least put an option
accessible via prefs.js to disable this.  I searched all over the web and found
no solution.  

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. click on link
2. drag to select text
3. release mouse button

Actual Results:  
A cursor with a picture of a piece of paper appeared, then snapped back to the
starting point of my click.

Expected Results:  
Allowed me to select the text.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

On Windows, you can disable link dragging temporarily by holding Alt.

Comment 2

[TGOS]

Yes, but then a download window opens and asks me where I want to store the
target of this link! Often I want to only select one word of a very long link.
Right now I can only select the link as a whole.

Comment 3

[Vincent Lefevre]

FYI, you can select a part of the link using mod1 with Mozilla (so, yet another
reason not to switch to Firefox...), except in some cases, where the link is
followed.

Comment 4

[Vincent Lefevre]

Now I'm using Firefox, I have the same problem as the one described in comment
#2. It seems that the Alt feature is not official (contrary to what many people
said) and the discussion is still open. Dup of bug 50673?

Comment 5

[Michael Orlitzky]

This has been annoying me for about a third of my life.

Comment 6

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Vincent Lefevre from comment #4)
> Now I'm using Firefox, I have the same problem as the one described in
> comment #2. It seems that the Alt feature is not official (contrary to
> what many people said) and the discussion is still open.

This is no longer true. I ca no longer disable dragging with any modifiers. I don't know what leaded to behavior change: Firefox, some library, the X system, my config (I switched from xmodmap to Xkb for keyboard settings)?

Comment 7

[:Gavin Sharp [email: [e-mail]]]

We're not going to add an option. Alt+Drag works at least in some cases (WFM on Windows and Mac), but there are other bugs on improving smart drag detection.

Comment 8

[Vincent Lefevre]

Well, the user doesn't necessarily has an Alt key on his keyboard. Bug 50673 has more information (see also bug 751749 for what has been done for the accel key).

Anyway even some modifier key + drag is not completely satisfactory for me: I *never* use the drag feature. So, I'd prefer to avoid the modifier. If need be, the modifier could start a drag.

What are the other bugs for smart drag detection?

Comment 9

[hatasoft]

what's the problem with adding the option?
why do users need to jump through hoops every time they need to disable the feature they don't need?

Comment 10

[Kestrel]

Hyperlink dragging seems to be standard and non-configurable behavior for browsers at the expense of link highlighting.

You can disable link dragging with the following GreaseMonkey javascript:  

document.addEventListener('dragstart', function(event) { event.preventDefault(); }, true);

But disabling dragging doesn't enable selection so nothing is achieved, you still need to start selection outside the link or use the ALT modifier.

Opera 12.0 behavior is ideal, horizontal dragging highlights link text, vertical dragging drags the link.

Comment 11

[Vincent Lefevre]

(In reply to Jack Harper from comment #10)
> Hyperlink dragging seems to be standard and non-configurable behavior for
> browsers at the expense of link highlighting.

Is there any reason not to make this configurable? In my case, I never use dragging, so that the current feature is useless.

> You can disable link dragging with the following GreaseMonkey javascript:  
> 
> document.addEventListener('dragstart', function(event) {
> event.preventDefault(); }, true);
> 
> But disabling dragging doesn't enable selection so nothing is achieved, you
> still need to start selection outside the link or use the ALT modifier.

Isn't it possible to modify it to simulate the ALT modifier?

> Opera 12.0 behavior is ideal, horizontal dragging highlights link text,
> vertical dragging drags the link.

It would be better than the current status (and probably OK for me).

Comment 12

[Kestrel]

Vote for the opera method here: http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=378775 (first submitted in 2007!)

Comment 13

[Vincent Lefevre]

Safari's behavior, described in bug 378775 comment 10, would also be OK for me.

Comment 14

[hatasoft]

haha i feel about the same because of this bug http://xkcd.com/1271/