597406 - can't select text from floating div

Status: UNCONFIRMED

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

Description

[Hugh Allen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10 ( .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET4.0E)

When you try to select text (using the mouse) from a div with style="float: left" under some circumstances, you can't. I'll attach a minimal test case.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open either the given URL (get username/password from bugmenot) or the attached test case
2. Try to select text from either the table beginning "Number of Constituents" (no quotes) or the first or third paragraph of the test case by clicking the mouse and dragging.
3.
Actual Results:  
Text is selected from the wrong area or not at all.

Expected Results:  
Text is selected where you drag the mouse.

Comment 1

[Hugh Allen]

Attachment: minimal HTML test case

Comment 2

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

The relatively positioned div coming after the float ends up painting on top of the float (because it's positioned).  You can see this if you put a background on the rel pos div.So when you're clicking, the click event hits the rel pos div, not the float.Webkit has the same behavior, for the same reason.  See bug 102695 for more sordid details.

Comment 3

[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.