98479 - Click-drag in url bar selects all text to the left of cursor

Status: VERIFIED DUPLICATE of bug 97822

(SeaMonkey :: Location Bar, defect)

Description

[Sebastian Späth]

The default behavior is currently (on Windows) that single clicking the location
bar without moving the mouse will highlite everything (fine). When holding the
mouse button down and moving, it will select everything from the *left* till the
mouse pointer. This is really annoying.

This is the dumbest behavior I have ever seen! When trying to edit a *part* of
the URL, it is for sure not going to be the left part while leaving the right
part as it is. The other way round might make a bit more sense.

Note that this behavior is different on all platforms and this is filed as
Windows bug. There were also a couple of related bugs, but none about this behavior.

Expected behavior: A more intelligent selection behavior when moving the mouse
while holding the button.
1) Select everything from the right (Which is the more likely part to edit) or
even better
2) Select just what I really selected.

Comment 1

[Waheed Islam]

i have to agree.

this problem actually causes a type of bug, which i'm not sure has been posted.
but sometimes (and i mean like 1 in 30 or something), when you click the url box
it doesn't select everything, instead only the left part.

Comment 2

[Andreas M. "Clarence" Schneider]

Bug 97822 is related.

Comment 3

[Alec Flett]

let's keep advocacy out of the bugs. In the future let's try to be specific
about the bug.

Comment 4

[Tim Powell]

Thanks for logging this. I was beginning to wonder whether I was just going
crazy. It appears that what is happening is that when you click+drag in the URL
bar, it first sets the entire bar to be selected (because of the click), then
notices the drag so it clears the selection and sets it to begin at the left and
move to where you end the drag. What we want is for it to set the first
selection point at the start of the click+drag and only select what we meant. 

If Moz can't select what we meant, I'd be fine with 4x behavior which is to
completely ignore the click+drag. In Nav4.x all the first click+drag does is
select everything on the URL bar. This may be a Windows standard. At least IE5
and IE5.5 do the same thing with initial click+drag.

A related problem that I have is that click, then click+drag drags the text.
This is also different from 4x behavior. In 4xp, clicking the URL bar selects
all, then a click+drag creates a new selection. This makes editing a portion of
the URL much easier. In Moz, I currently have to click (selects all), click
again to deselect (places cursor), and then click+drag.

Comment 5

[Jesse Ruderman]

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 97822 ***

Comment 6

[sairuh (rarely reading bugmail)]

mass-verifying Duplicate bugs which haven't changed since 2001.12.31.

set your search string in mail to "CitizenGKar" to filter out these messages.