264934 - automatic select-all breaks UI consistency (browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll should default false on mac)

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 233977

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[posita]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X Mach-O; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.1

The "I-know-better-than-you" inferred select-all operation that is triggered
when the URL or Search fields gain focus not only breaks nearly-universal UI
conventions, it's also really annoying. Note: this does *not* refer to
auto-completion (which is completely separate). Below are several examples of
how this UI tweak breaks.

Scenario #1, correcting a mis-typed URL:

Say I'm watching TV, and I see a URL I'd like to visit. I go to my computer and
type in the following URL:

    http://somecommpany.com/

When the site isn't found, I notice that I've mistyped the URL. I try to change
it by clicking in the text field to insert the cursor near one of the extraneous
'm' characters and typing backspace. Imagine my surprise when I've just
obliterated the entire URL.

Firefox has decided that I don't mean to insert the cursor there, but rather
that I mean to select the whole URL. How Microsoftian. Okay, fine. I select Edit
-> Undo, then I click again near the 'm'. This time it works, so I get it in my
head that I have to click twice to insert the cursor.

The next time I make a similar typing mistake, only this time I'm smarter, so I
double-click near the erroneous character. Imagine my surprise when the cursor
is not inserted near the 'm', but rather that the entire word 'somecommpany' is
selected. Now I have to be shocked by the behavior *twice*, and I have to click
a third time to get it to do what I want.

Scenerio #2, pasting terms into the search box:

I want to search for something about which my friend told me in an e-mail. He
claims to have xerophthalmia, but is concerned because he also seems to be
exhibiting hyperpnea. I want to do a search to see if there are any known cases
of a relation between the two, but I'm a terrible speller, so I copy
"xerophthalmia" from my friend's e-mail and paste it into the search text field
in my browser and hit space. I am careful to leave the cursor right where I want
the second term to go in the search field. I shift focus back to my friend's
e-mail, copy the word "hyperpnea" and change focus back to my browser and paste it.

Imagine my surprise when my original term was obliterated and replaced by the
last thing I pasted. I expected it to paste the word where I left the cursor,
but Firefox is smarter than me, so when the browser window regained focus, it
selected my entire search terms for me, so when I did paste the second term, it
replaced everything previously.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
See above.
Actual Results:  
See above.

Expected Results:  
See above.

Both of the above scenarios are interchangeable in both the URL and search text
fields. They behave similarly, and suffer from similar ailments (i.e., that
correcting a typing mistake in the search field is just as frustrating, as is
pasting into the URL field).

This feels like a case of trying to get cute with a UI to "help" the neophyte
user, but all it does is break consistency and provide yet another exception the
user has to learn. When the user does want to do something which should be
familiar, it requires two-to-three times as many clicks/keystrokes and takes ten
times as long because the user has to remember that the behavior for these two
fields is different than every other similar looking thing in the entire UI and
either experiment or recall the exceptions.

Comment 1

[Tuukka Tolvanen (sp3000)]

You can change this behaviour by going to about:config and toggling
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll to the desired setting there.

I don't see a Firefox Mac bug on the default setting of
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll filed yet...

(related seamonkey bugs: bug 134649 - mac default, bug 90587 - task switch with
url bar focused selects all)

Do try to keep bug reports more concise if possible, they have a better chance
of getting fixed, that way

Comment 2

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 233977 ***

Comment 3

[Phil Ringnalda (:philor)]

First time got half-way there, maybe this time Bugzilla can really finish the
transaction.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 233977 ***