513612 - paste behaviour changed for the worse

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Search, defect)

Description

[Jason Haar]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090803 Fedora/3.5.2-2.fc11 Firefox/3.5.2
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090803 Fedora/3.5.2-2.fc11 Firefox/3.5.2

Under 3.5.2 I find that paste (under Linux - don't know about others) doesn't work like it used to in the Search bar (ie google search).

Quite often I select some text from another app and paste it into the Search bar. Normally I would be clicking in the bar, and then use backspace to delete previous content, then middle-button to paste the new text in. 

Under 3.5 (maybe only 3.5.2?), that doesn't happen anymore. Now when I click in the Search bar, the old content is auto-selected - which effectively throws out the text I had just selected! If I hit backspace, it deletes, but then paste-ing simply puts the old content back again - instead of what I was trying to do!



Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. select text
2. click in Search bar - watch as current content auto-highlighted
3. delete
4. paste - old content re-appears - the text I original selected is lost

Comment 1

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Maybe a faulty extension or a combination of preferences; can you retest in safe-mode and with a new profile?
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode
http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting#Make_a_new_profile

Comment 2

[Jason Haar]

I did one better: I renamed .mozilla and restarted firefox - you are correct - that fixed the problem.

However, I then  copied back the affected original .mozilla dir and removed extension* and started firefox - the problem remained. So it's not an extension - which leaves "combination of preferences" if you are correct.

I *think* this issue kicked in when I started using weave? (that may be a red-herring). about:config shows tonnes of settings - how should I diagnose what is causing it? I don't want to just throw my profile away and start again - it's 10 years old - full of saved passwords/etc. Too valuable :-)

Thanks

Jason

Comment 3

[Henrik Skupin [:whimboo][⌚️UTC+1]]

Jason, you can disable extensions step by step to check which is the faulty one.

Comment 4

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Here's a tutorial: http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Basic+Troubleshooting

Comment 5

[Jason Haar]

Sorry, my reply must have been unclear. I deleted ALL extensions and the problem remained. So it's not extensions. I  think Ria's comment about it been caused by some weird combination of preferences is probably the cause. 

So I just followed the link Ria sent and reset my preferences using 
"firefox -safe-mode"

That fixed it! Obviously I'm having to reset a lot of settings, but they are minor compared with throwing away all my passwords& bookmarks - so I'm happy. No closer as to a cause - but I'm happy :-)

Thanks people - I can't believe your turn-around on this! Good evening from New Zealand

Jason

Comment 6

[Ria Klaassen (not reading all bugmail)]

Resolving Worksforme, if the problem reoccurs, can you attach your prefs.js file, then someone with Linux can try to reproduce it. You can find it in your profile folder.

Comment 7

[Jason Haar]

Ah ha! Thanks to that last comment, I discovered the culprit.

Something I've installed (or maybe it happened as part of me upgrading from Fedora10 (FF3.0) to Fedora11 (FF3.5) - I dunno) altered browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll from "false" to "true".

According to the follow URL - this was an official change in FF3 - but I know I've only seen it since FF3.5...?

http://www.macworld.com/article/133674/2008/05/ff3urls.html


Thanks

Jason