424037 - Location bar should select onmousedown instead of onclick

Status: RESOLVED INACTIVE

(Firefox :: Address Bar, enhancement)

Description

[Michael Haufe]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008031905 Minefield/3.0b5pre
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9b5pre) Gecko/2008031905 Minefield/3.0b5pre

The current Opera browser allows you to select the URL in the location bar onmousedown, FireFox currently selects the URL onclick. IMO, this feature gives Opera a sense of speed, and should be duplicated in FireFox as well.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open the Opera browser (9.50 beta)
2. Hold down the left mouse button
3. Open the current FireFox browser  (3.0b5pre/2008031905)
4. Hold down the left mouse button
Actual Results:  
onmousedown, the url is not selected.


Expected Results:  
The url should be selected onmousedown, not onclick

Comment 1

[Jesse Ruderman]

The latest Opera snapshot for Mac uses onclick selection for both address bar autocomplete and the address bar dropdown.

Comment 2

[Jesse Ruderman]

I like this idea.

Comment 3

[Simon Bünzli]

Just make sure not to break the use case where you hold down-move-release in order to select only parts of the URL instead of the whole. I guess if we selected onmousedown, this might result in a drag&drop operation instead (which should make this bug WONTFIX because of a feature regression).

Comment 4

[Michael Haufe]

What Opera appears to do in this case is disallow drag&drop on initial focus until mouseup. Afterward drag/drop works as expected.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

Oh, I thought you were talking about autocomplete or dropdown results.  Ignore what I said earlier.

Opera's behavior does "look faster" for a simple click, but I think it would make the "you can drag to select just part of the URL" feature harder to discover, making it a net loss.

Comment 6

[Jesse Ruderman]

I filed bug 424051 on what I initially thought you were talking about ;)

Comment 7

[Michael Haufe]

This is purely aesthetic I admit. But at least the idea is floating out there. Maybe an about:config setting?

Comment 8

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

I'm afraid this won't get into Firefox 3 anymore.

(In reply to comment #3)
> Just make sure not to break the use case where you hold down-move-release in
> order to select only parts of the URL instead of the whole. I guess if we
> selected onmousedown, this might result in a drag&drop operation instead (which
> should make this bug WONTFIX because of a feature regression).
>
I don't see this drag and drop operation in Internet Explorer 7. 

Comment 9

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #8)
> (In reply to comment #3)
> > Just make sure not to break the use case where you hold down-move-release in
> > order to select only parts of the URL instead of the whole. I guess if we
> > selected onmousedown, this might result in a drag&drop operation instead (which
> > should make this bug WONTFIX because of a feature regression).
> >
> I don't see this drag and drop operation in Internet Explorer 7. 

You can't drag-select in IE7.

Drag-select works in Opera but looks jarring. We should WONTFIX this bug.

Comment 10

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

(In reply to comment #9)
>
I can select parts of an URL in Internet Explorer 7.
I'm sure it would have implications and fall-out bugs, if Firefox would change to mousedown. 

Comment 11

[Dão Gottwald [:dao]]

(In reply to comment #10)
> I can select parts of an URL in Internet Explorer 7.

Only if the location bar already had focus, which is not what this bug is about.

Comment 12

[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.