657855 - clicking location bar shows a caret, indicating insertion of text, even though the whole text will be selected

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Firefox :: Address Bar, defect)

Description

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

When clicking to select the location bar, a caret is first shown.
This visual feedback indicates that text will be inserted and backspace will delete just one character.

However just after the user sees this and begins typing, the caret is removed and the whole text is shown selected.  Typing deletes the entire text.

Expected results:
The caret should not be shown (until the selection is removed in some way).

(Similar in nature to Bug 546378.)

Comment 1

[BMO Automation]

Per policy at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Bug_Triage/Projects/Bug_Handling/Bug_Husbandry#Inactive_Bugs. If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.

Comment 2

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

All platforms, since https://phabricator.services.mozilla.com/D64783

Comment 3

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

Still a problem. However Bug 333714 isn't the regressor, but rather made the problem occur on all platforms equally. Moving to "See also".

Taking a somewhat closer look: It seems like there is a ~100ms time frame when the caret is shown where entering a single letter does indeed enter the letter at that position of the URI. So the caret is not just an artifact, but we don't immidiately select the full url.

Reopening due to this being true: from comment 2

If this bug is not an enhancement request or a bug not present in a supported release of Firefox, then it may be reopened.

Resetting severity due to using different severity rating nowadays.

Comment 4

[Marco Bonardo [:mak] (Away 10-21 August)]

There are already existing bugs like Bug 1953361 tracking the possibility of the first character being eaten due to select all, that's a bug that should be fixed, but it's already tracked.

Though, related to this bug, there is not really a better cursor to indicate a "select all" behavior, and it's pretty common (indeed all browsers do) to use the caret cursor even if the first click will select all contents. We don't plan to change that, as it's consistent across browsers and platforms.

Comment 5

[Karl Tomlinson (:karlt)]

The arrowhead pointer would be better to indicate selection than the text insertion pointer. Some prelight/hover indication could be provided, if desired, to show what would be selected.

But this bug is about the caret not the pointer.

Comment 6

[Manuel Bucher [:manuel]]

Attachment: output.mkv

video of the behavior (I forgot to attach yesterday, due to not being able to modify bugzilla tags + add attachment at the same time).

caret shown after clicking on URL bar 1.900s - 2.033s before full url is selected