260128 - Mouse-selecting text of greater width than the input of a form doesn't select text correctly.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Chris Bailey]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

I have tested this on Firefox 1.0PR on my Win2k machine as well as 0.93 on a
co-worker's WinXP machine.  Both experienced the glitch.

There are a few conditions which must exist for the bug to occur:
1. You must be looking at an HTML form with either an <input type="text"> or a
<textarea>.
2. There must be a wide enough amount of text that it is not all displayed
concurrently.
3. You must be attempting to select the text with the mouse, not the keyboard.
4.(optional) The cursor should not be in the field you are testing before you
attempt to select the text. (It *sometimes* works normally if the cursor starts
out in the field, though very seldom.)

Also, the strange behavior only occurs if you attempt to select text starting
from before the first character or after the last character of a form's text
input, and only if there is enough text that one would need to "scroll" or
cursor horizontally to see all of it.

Situation 1: Clicking into the input just before the first (leftmost) character
and dragging the cursor to the right -- Firefox appears to jump the cursor about
30 characters into the document and highlights text based on that position as
the anchor.  It also will not scroll to the right end of the text input to
select the text that is sitting out of visible range.

Situation 2: Clicking into the input just after the last (rightmost) character
and dragging to the left -- The highlighting of selected text will at first seem
to work correctly.  However, Firefox will not scroll to the left to select all
the text off screen, and when the mouse cursor leaves the text input, the
text-cursor will jump back 30-ish characters just like the jump in situation 1
above.

Selecting from anywhere other than the very beginning or end of the text works
absolutely correctly.  If the text fits on the screen such that scrolling to
select everything is not necessary, there is no problem.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Take any text input on an HTML form such as one on Bugzilla and place enough
characters such that the text is longer than the width of the input and you must
scroll to see it all.
2. Attempt to select all the text in the input by click & dragging, starting
from either the very beginning or very end.
Actual Results:  
Firefox will not scroll to select all the text, and it jumps the anchor position
as detailed in the "Details".

Expected Results:  
I should be able to scroll back and forth to select all the text with the mouse, no?

Workaround: Simply use the keyboard to select the text.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is an automated message, with ID "auto-resolve01".

This bug has had no comments for a long time. Statistically, we have found that
bug reports that have not been confirmed by a second user after three months are
highly unlikely to be the source of a fix to the code.

While your input is very important to us, our resources are limited and so we
are asking for your help in focussing our efforts. If you can still reproduce
this problem in the latest version of the product (see below for how to obtain a
copy) or, for feature requests, if it's not present in the latest version and
you still believe we should implement it, please visit the URL of this bug
(given at the top of this mail) and add a comment to that effect, giving more
reproduction information if you have it.

If it is not a problem any longer, you need take no action. If this bug is not
changed in any way in the next two weeks, it will be automatically resolved.
Thank you for your help in this matter.

The latest beta releases can be obtained from:
Firefox:     http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/
Thunderbird: http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/releases/1.5beta1.html
Seamonkey:   http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/

Comment 2

[Chris Bailey]

Just responding to the automated e-mail, I can confirm that this is still an
issue up through 1.07, and easily reproducible.

Take any input text field on a form, fill it with enough characters that it
can't fit all of them in the visible area horizontally, and then try to
highlight the characters with a mouse drag from before the first or after the
last characters.  The text is not highlighted correctly if you try to scroll
left or right to highlight everything.  It works correctly for any other
position in the character string, just not the first and last.  There are a few
different behaviors, depending on whether it's an <input type="text"> or a
<textarea>, but neither is correct.

Comment 3

[Jo Hermans]

works for me in Firefox 1.5 beta 2
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051013
Firefox/1.4.1

Comment 4

[Chris Bailey]

Update: I am still easily able to reproduce the bug in Firefox 1.5 beta 2 and in
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051013. 

It's a minor annoyance, easily worked around with the keyboard, but it does
exist, I assure you.

(In reply to comment #3)
> works for me in Firefox 1.5 beta 2
> Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b5) Gecko/20051013
> Firefox/1.4.1

Comment 5

[Dustin]

Could not reproduce bug at either left or right sides in latest version:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.6) Gecko/20060728 Firefox/1.5.0.6

However, I could reproduce the bug in two earlier versions, but only from right to left.  Highlighting text from left endpoint to the right would act as expected.  Highlighting from right end point to left, however, would not scroll to reveal the text that was beyond the box. 
Those versions were:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050915 Firefox/1.0.7
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.8) Gecko/20050511 Firefox/1.0.4

As stated, highlighting from anywhere other than the ends acts as expected.

Comment 6

[Samuel Sidler (old account; do not CC)]

This works for me using Firefox 2.0.0.3 on Mac OS X 10.4 and Windows XP SP 2. I'm resolving this as WFM based on my comment as well as comment 5.

Chris, if you're able to reproduce this bug using Firefox 2.0.0.3 (or later) and using a new profile, please reopen this bug.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager