585229 - selection on a display:none iframe returns different value than WebKit/Opera

Status: NEW

(Core :: DOM: Selection, defect, P5)

Description

[Ojan Vafai]

Attachment: test case

See attachment. At first glance, the WebKit/Opera behavior seems more consistent. It matches what you would get in a visible iframe that had no selection in it.

Equivalent webkit bug: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=43655

Comment 1

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

Gecko's selection objects are tied to a presentation; there simply isn't one in a display:none iframe.  In particular, you can't select text in such an iframe programmatically, unlike a visible iframe.

Comment 2

[Ojan Vafai]

That kind of makes sense to me, but if you get the selection and then display:none the iframe, you end up in the same situation (have a Selection object inside a display:none iframe). So you still need to deal with that case anyways.

Again, I don't feel strongly about this, but I slightly prefer the consistency of the webkit/opera approach. I'll bring this up on whatwg.

Comment 3

[Ojan Vafai]

Attachment: display:none after getting selection

Comment 4

[David Karger]

The buggy function, getSelection(), isn't mentioned anywhere in this bug, so it doesn't show up in search results.

While you are deciding what the proper behavior is, I think it would be helpful to update the mozilla developer docs on the function: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/window.getSelection asserts that the function always returns a selection object, which does not reflect the current behavior when display:none is in effect.

Comment 5

[Ojan Vafai]

http://lists.whatwg.org/htdig.cgi/whatwg-whatwg.org/2010-August/027767.html

Comment 6

[Eric Seidel]

It appears getSelection no longer exists in HTML5.  I'm not sure what the relevant spec would be.

Comment 7

[Eric Seidel]

Found it:
http://dvcs.w3.org/hg/editing/raw-file/tip/editing.html

I've filed:
https://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=15134

Comment 8

[Aryeh Gregor (:ayg) (no longer with Mozilla)]

IE, Webkit, and Opera all seem to agree that every Window has a Selection.  This is what the spec says too.  Gecko's behavior is more complicated and in the minority, so I haven't changed the spec.

Comment 9

[Jens Stutte [:jstutte]]

Bulk-downgrade of unassigned, >=5 years untouched DOM/Storage bugs' priority and severity.

If you have reason to believe this is wrong, please write a comment and ni :jstutte.