899945 - Popup blocker causes loop

Status: NEW

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[JDev]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.2; WOW64; rv:22.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/22.0 (Beta/Release)
Build ID: 20130618035212

Steps to reproduce:

When going to a site which triggers a popup onclick(?) there is a loop effect if a dropdown menu is the element that needs to be clicked.  This is because the popup takes the focus away from the element causing it to close while the popup window is opened then immediately closed.  While poor coding practice, for usability sake the dropdown should not close until another element in the same document is selected


Actual results:

Dropdown opened, dropdown auto-closed, window opened, window closed, repeat.


Expected results:

Dropdown opened, window opened, window closed, access still open dropdown menu.

Comment 1

[Loic]

Provide website URL, please.

Comment 2

[JDev]

As of this moment it's occurring on http://thepiratebay.sx/search/test/0/99/0 though that may change at any point.

Comment 3

[Ioana (away)]

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/24.0

I think this is by designed, given that it works the same in other browsers too. Ergo, changing it as an enhancement.

Comment 4

[JDev]

Moving this back to "normal" as this is a user navigation blocking issue not an enhancement request.

A discussion needs to occur to determine whether onclick, and similar, are triggered immediately when the dropdown itself is selected or once a selection is made.  

My contention is that nothing is "clicked" until a selection is made, the clicking of the dropdown itself is merely a UI necessity not the user clicking something in the document.  While I can see limited use-cases for using such functionality the alternatives are far worse.  If left as is each time someone clicks the down arrow an event can be triggered that prevents the user from being able to ever make a selection.  This negative aspect far outweighs the limited need to know when the user has opened the dropdown.

The only alternative to the above is to leave the dropdown in the open position until either a) a selection is made or b) another element is clicked (not just focus regained).  This would be a fundamental UI change that is not necessarily similar to other browsers.