926257 - Can't select link text from fields on google maps (and some other pages)

Status: NEW

(Core :: General, defect)

Description

[Akkana Peck]

On Linux, certain pages like Google Maps use javascript that somehow disables any possibility of copying and pasting things that are obviously intended to be pasted.

Go to Google Maps, navigate around as desired, then click on the "Link" button (top right corner of the left sidebar, the chain link icon). A square pops up (not a popup window, just something drawn on the current window) headed "Paste link in email or IM". Two lines under that there's a text field with a long URL for the current location. It's highlighted.

Now I want to be able to paste it, with the normal X paste method of middle mouse click. But middle mousing does not paste that link -- it's not in the X primary selection. It's not in either of the other two selections either, as you can verify by running xsel three times with the -p, -s and -b options, or combine them all with this command:
echo -n primary:; xsel -p; echo; echo -n secondary: ; xsel -s; echo; echo -n clipboard:; xsel -b; echo

Double-clicking in the link field doesn't help -- it still doesn't get copied to any of the three selection buffers. Basically there is no way I've found to get the link pasteable, short of firing up a browser other than Firefox (it works fine in chromium and midori).

I've seen this problem on a few other sites, including several url shorteners like is.gd, but it's most bothersome on google maps. I first started seeing it maybe 3-5 months ago, but I don't know if that's because of a Firefox change or because sites started using JS code that triggered an existing bug. I haven't been able to winnow through the maze of JS on google maps pages to figure out exactly what's happening, but on is.gd the problem call boiled down to select() called on the input box. I've made a simpler test that demonstrates the problem: http://shallowsky.com/javascript/select-test/

Comment 1

[Akkana Peck]

Adding to X paste tracking bug.

Comment 2

[Olli Pettay [:smaug][[e-mail]]]

The link is <input readonly>, but that as such doesn't seem to be enough to trigger the bug. data:text/html,<input readonly value="somevalue"> seems to work