261862 - many clicks required to wholly select text field input when it has a history drop-down

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[jon moses]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10

The default 'select all text in field' for osx is a triple click.  This is
conflicting with the new 'when text field has focus and rec'vs click, drop the
"history" menu'.  I find my self having to go on a mad clicking frenzy to get
the entire contents of the text box to select.

First I'll get the 'recent entries' drop down, and de-selected text, then I'll
get a selected word (double click, on osx), then I'll get the drop down again,
then maybe I'll get nothing.  It's really frustrating.

Maybe a key+mouse combo for the 'recent entries' drop down?

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Attempt to fully select (triple-click) a text field in a form that has a
'history'/'recent entries' drop down available.
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
Mad clicking frenzy war with the history drop down.

Expected Results:  
Behaved, and let me triple-click to select the entire contents.

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

I'm on Windows and the appearance of the autocomplete dropdown doesn't conflict
with triple-clicking to select the entire textbox.  I wonder why it would be
different on Mac.

Comment 2

[jon moses]

i went back and re-attempted my problem.  it's not many many clicks.  It only
seems to be an extra click.  Part of my problem seemed to be that I'd end up
with a fully selected text box and click again right away.

So, there only seems to be a extra click needed to get the entire text box
selected.  It may be something with how osx handles the focus of text / popups.
 I've noticed that osx sometimes doesn't do the "right thing".

Comment 3

[Asaf Romano (gone)]

Triple-click works fine here, as in windows.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040930
Firefox/0.10

Comment 4

[Ben Fowler]

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8a5) Gecko/20041107
Firefox/0.9.1+

Jaguar 10.2.6

Believe it or not I have never seen a clear statement that: "The default 
'select all text in field' for osx is a triple click.". I had always thought
that triple-click selects the current line; exempli gratia:

http://www.xvsxp.com/applications/internet/ ; see also
http://www.macosxhints.com/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20030311025934177&title=Don%5C't+forget+triple-click!&pid=0

I find that triple click selects line (as expected), and that quadruple 
clicking selects the line and the line above. Personally, I feel that
triple clicking is one click too far and quadruple clicking is right out.

(You will find some applications in which triple click selects a 'paragraph'
or a 'story')

There is some logic in having a mouse implementation of "select all", and 
triple click seems as good as any.

Are people in fact happy with the current behaviour? If so, document it
and resolve this bug works for me. If not, we need to know what triple
click currently does (in Mac OS X), and what it should do; we need to know 
whether it is desirable to have a way for the mouse to select the entire
contents of a text field, and then in what way.

BTW, with respect to the 'fighting the drop down', I find that triple
clicking is no problem, but double clicking only works a minority of the
time.

Comment 5

[jon moses]

Personally, I think that triple-clicking is fine for a select-all.

Comment 6

[Uri Bernstein]

Confirming. This has been annoying me for quite a while now. I need between 4
and 5 clicks to get the text selected.

Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8b4) Gecko/20050908
Firefox/1.4
And:
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20050909
Firefox/1.6a1

Comment 7

[Uri Bernstein]

*** Bug 307776 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 8

[Uri Bernstein]

"Form Manager" is /probably/ closer to the correct component.

Comment 9

[Vincent Lefevre]

Since this is directly related to the autocomplete feature, I would have thought
that it would belong to the "Location Bar and Autocomplete" component.

Comment 10

[Uri Bernstein]

(In reply to comment #9)
> Since this is directly related to the autocomplete feature, I would have thought
> that it would belong to the "Location Bar and Autocomplete" component.

Right.

Comment 11

[Adam Guthrie]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9a1) Gecko/20050910 Firefox/1.6a1
ID:2005091012

Seeing/being annoyed by this on Linux, too.

Comment 12

[jon moses]

Right, I see this in linux too.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050817 Firefox/1.0.6

Comment 13

[Uri Bernstein]

=> All/All, per comments #11 and #12.

Comment 14

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 270390 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 15

[Vincent Lefevre]

Just to say that this bug is still present in FF 2.0.0.13 (e.g. Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; en-US; rv:1.8.1.13) Gecko/20080311 Firefox/2.0.0.13).

Comment 16

[Erik Johansson]

Still present in Firefox 3.0b5. ( "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008032619 Firefox/3.0b5" )

I believe the standard behavior on Mac is that single click inserts cursor, double click selects a word and triple click selects the whole paragraph.

Comment 18

[Dan Mills [:thunder]]

I hadn't found this bug in my search, so I filed bug 430612.  I'll repost here my findings, since they seem more exact (behavior differs depending on several variables):

Double click:

1 Textbox not selected:
  Selects word (correct).
2 Textbox selected, autocomplete visible:
  Selects word (correct).
3 Textbox selected, autocomplete not visible:
  Opens and closes autocomplete box, leaves text unselected (incorrect).

Triple click:

1 Textbox not selected:
  Selects word (incorrect).
2 Textbox selected, autocomplete visible:
  Selects word (incorrect).
3 Textbox selected, autocomplete not visible:
  Selects field (correct).

In all of the tests, I had a web page with a text box (e.g., bugzilla), and I
input a few words into the text box which match previous entries, so the
autocomplete box will appear.

In the cases marked 'incorrect' above, adding an extra click
gets me the desired behavior (that is, I occasionally have to triple click to
select a word, and quadruple click to select the entire field).

Comment 19

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.