614542 - Ctrl-Backspace in text fields sometimes deletes entire line instead of last word

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, defect)

Description

[Nico R.]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101103 Gentoo Firefox/3.6.12
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.12) Gecko/20101103 Lightning/1.0b3pre Thunderbird/3.1.6

The Ctrl-Backspace key combination does not always work as expected. It usually deletes the last word (that is, the word in front of the cursor).

It is possible to put a message compose window into a state in which Ctrl-Backspace will no longer behave as expected.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open a new message compose window, e.g. by using File->New->Message (Ctrl-N) in Thunderbird.
The cursor should be in the ‘To:’ field.
2. Enter “foo bar buz”.
3. Press the Tab key to go to the ‘Subject:’ field.
4. Press Shift-Tab to go back to the ‘To:’ field.
The entire field (the complete text, “foo bar buz”) should be selected.
5. Press the End key.
The selection should be removed (no text should be selected afterwards), and the cursor should be at the end of the field (after the “z” in “buz”).
6. Press Ctrl-Backspace.
Actual Results:  
The entire field is deleted.

Expected Results:  
The word “buz” should be deleted, and the cursor be placed after the space after the word “bar”.

If you do NOT leave the field and go back to it (that is, if you omit steps 3 and 4 (and 5, but that does not seem to matter) from the above description), Ctrl-Backspace behaves as expected, that is, it deletes only the last word and not the entire field.

The same problem occurs if you place the cursor in the ‘Subject:’ field after opening the message compose window, and press Tab to go to the body textarea, and press Shift-Tab to go back to the ‘Subject:’ field.

After the Ctrl-Backspace bug has appeared once, it stays there as long as the message composer window is open. At least I have not found a way around it after it has occured. The problem is not immediately present in new message composer windows which are opened, but it can be triggered there as described above.

Comment 1

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

On Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; rv:2.0b8pre) Gecko/20101206 Thunderbird/3.3a2pre it deleted nothing - as expected as nothing is selected.

Can you try with Thunderbird launched in -safe-mode (http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/Safe+Mode) ?

Comment 2

[Nico R.]

This bug seems to be gone with Thunderbird 6.0.
Might also have been related to something with GTK+?