572099 - Undo and redo in textarea does not scroll to focus on the caret's new position.

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 331269

(Firefox :: Keyboard Navigation, defect)

Description

[Eduard Moraru]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100403 Fedora/3.6.3-4.fc13 Firefox/3.6.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.3) Gecko/20100403 Fedora/3.6.3-4.fc13 Firefox/3.6.3

If, in a textarea, you have text that spans more than the textarea's size you can scroll from one part of the text to another.

If you do a modification i.e. at the beginning of the text area's content, scroll at the end of the text area's content and then press CTRL+Z to UNDO the modification, the textarea does not scroll back to the beginning of it's context to show you where your action ahs been undone and where your new caret's position is.

This happens on both windows and linux but it seems that IE (ironically) handles this correctly.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Fill in a text area with text until it overflows and automatically scrolls down.
2. Scroll up in the textarea so that you can see your first words.
3. Modify something there.
4. Scroll down in the textarea until you see your last words but no longer see the first words.
5. Press CTRL+Z to undo the change you did at step 3.
6. Observe how the modification did at step 3 is undone, your caret is at the beginning of the content where the modification has been undone, but the textarea did not scroll to the beginning of the content. You can only see how your caret vanished.
7. Workaround: press RIGHTARROW and then LEFTARROW to get the textarea to focus roughly where your caret was placed by the undo process. 
Actual Results:  
See step 6:
The modification did at step 3 is undone, your caret is at the beginning of the content where the modification has been undone, but the textarea did not scroll to the beginning of the content. You can only see how your caret vanished.

Expected Results:  
Textarea should scroll to the undo location to make your caret visible and to inform you of the current status of the text.

Workaround: press RIGHTARROW and then LEFTARROW to get the textarea to focus roughly where your caret was placed by the undo process. 

This is very annoying when working in a big textarea and can lead to loss of content if the user is not careful.

Comment 1

[Eduard Moraru]

You can even try out this bug in the comment boxes of bugzilla.

Comment 2

[Eduard Moraru]

Any input on this?

I notice the same behavior on Chrome as well but do not understand the reason why this would be considered a feature and not a bug.

Comment 3

[Martijn Wargers (dead)]

I think this is a duplicate of bug 331269. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to finish up that patch.