4 ms·

The biggest item on my wish-list is still a user-option to restore the previous (sensible) click behavior for the address bar: one click places the cursor, doub

by kleiba 6y ago

The biggest item on my wish-list is still a user-option to restore the previous (sensible) click behavior for the address bar: one click places the cursor, double click selects (all, but if I need to triple click for that it would be fine, too). Sadly, this wish will probably not come true any time soon... or ever.

Tomte 6y ago
No, we're not getting it back. I filed a bug, thinking this was an inadvertant side-effect of the new address bar, but it was closed WONTFIX. The old user setting was never really supposed to be used on Windows, just as a workaround for something I don't remember, and the use case is invalid. I still wish I'd get that distinction between single click and double click back.
- kleiba 6y ago
  Yeah, I was aware of that bug report (thanks for filing it). The rationale given is ridiculous, though - anywhere else on my system if I click on a text field, the cursor gets placed where I click and nothing gets selected. It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for.
  - roryokane 6y ago
    > It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for. I think the current behavior is optimized for people who use the mouse for everything and don’t feel confident enough to edit the URL of the site they’re on. Such people aren’t comfortable with learning new keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-L or Alt-D, so they will notice an increase in speed because they only have to click once to select the URL. I imagine before they were either triple-clicking or clicking once and hitting Ctrl-A. Then those users type the name of the next site they want to visit, completely replacing the current URL, and press Enter to visit it.
cannam 6y ago
Same here - I've pinned my Linux machines to Firefox 74 for the moment, in the no-doubt vain hope that someone upstream will see sense before too long. I was previously using the option (that was removed in Firefox 75) to make the URL bars on the Windows and Mac versions behave in the same way as on Linux - I was really happy to be able to do that, since I've never understood why the single-click-highlight behaviour in some other browsers was supposed to be a good thing. But those Firefox installs are self-updating rather than managed through the package manager, so they got the new behaviour automatically. It's been a couple of months now, but I still don't like it.
aimor 6y ago
What is the current behavior? For me it is: single click: select all double click: select word single click after selecting something: place cursor
- kleiba 6y ago
  That's the current one here, too.
- roryokane 6y ago
  The old behavior, back in Firefox 65, was this: single click: place cursor double click: select word triple click: select all
Normille 6y ago
CMD+L [I'm on a mac, adapt as appropriate for your particular platform] places the cursor in the address bar and selects all the text. Then, if needs be, hit left arrow to move cursor to start of URL and deselect text. Hit right arrow to move to end of URL and deselect text. Seems to be a standard keyboard shortcut across browsers. Works for me in Firefox, Yandex and Opera.
- Ballas 6y ago
  F6 everywhere else
- kleiba 6y ago
  Thanks, I'm talking about the mouse, though. I do use these keyboard shortcuts all the time but that is sort of orthogonal to the changed click behavior -- which is unlike for any other text field on my system.
- roryokane 6y ago
  The action that the recent change to Firefox made harder is not any the actions you just described how to do, but placing the cursor at a point _within_ the URL. The recent change made it require a click to select the whole URL, a pause, and another click to place the cursor, instead of just a place to place the cursor. I used to place the cursor inside the URL a lot and was disappointed when that action got slower. I was all set to give an example of why it’s bad, but right now, I’m actually having trouble thinking of such an example. I used to place the cursor inside a URL and then hit Shift-Command-Right to select the text after that, but I’ve just realized that clicking inside the URL and then dragging the mouse down is even faster. And I used to place the cursor near a section of the URL and use the keyboard to select and delete it, but double-clicking and dragging seems to take a similar amount of time in the examples I can think of. Hmm… okay, I’ve thought of a good use-case for placing the cursor inside the URL: adding a subdomain. If I’m developing http://example.com/foo http://example.com/foo and want to go to the staging server http://staging.example.com/foo http://staging.example.com/foo, I used to be able to click before “example” and type “staging.”. Now that requires two clicks and a pause, and the selection shortcuts above don’t help.
eitland 6y ago
He. My biggest ux annoyance is navigation-disappears-from-context-menu-if-any-text-is-selected. Expanding location bar is close though and unlike removing navigation arrows from context menus I cannot see any reason at all for it.

by kleiba 6y ago

Tomte 6y ago

No, we're not getting it back. I filed a bug, thinking this was an inadvertant side-effect of the new address bar, but it was closed WONTFIX. The old user setting was never really supposed to be used on Windows, just as a workaround for something I don't remember, and the use case is invalid. I still wish I'd get that distinction between single click and double click back.

kleiba 6y ago
Yeah, I was aware of that bug report (thanks for filing it). The rationale given is ridiculous, though - anywhere else on my system if I click on a text field, the cursor gets placed where I click and nothing gets selected. It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for.
- roryokane 6y ago
  > It's hard for me to imagine what use case the current behavior is optimized for. I think the current behavior is optimized for people who use the mouse for everything and don’t feel confident enough to edit the URL of the site they’re on. Such people aren’t comfortable with learning new keyboard shortcuts like Ctrl-L or Alt-D, so they will notice an increase in speed because they only have to click once to select the URL. I imagine before they were either triple-clicking or clicking once and hitting Ctrl-A. Then those users type the name of the next site they want to visit, completely replacing the current URL, and press Enter to visit it.

cannam 6y ago

Same here - I've pinned my Linux machines to Firefox 74 for the moment, in the no-doubt vain hope that someone upstream will see sense before too long. I was previously using the option (that was removed in Firefox 75) to make the URL bars on the Windows and Mac versions behave in the same way as on Linux - I was really happy to be able to do that, since I've never understood why the single-click-highlight behaviour in some other browsers was supposed to be a good thing. But those Firefox installs are self-updating rather than managed through the package manager, so they got the new behaviour automatically. It's been a couple of months now, but I still don't like it.

aimor 6y ago

What is the current behavior? For me it is: single click: select all double click: select word single click after selecting something: place cursor

kleiba 6y ago
That's the current one here, too.
roryokane 6y ago
The old behavior, back in Firefox 65, was this: single click: place cursor double click: select word triple click: select all

Normille 6y ago

CMD+L [I'm on a mac, adapt as appropriate for your particular platform] places the cursor in the address bar and selects all the text. Then, if needs be, hit left arrow to move cursor to start of URL and deselect text. Hit right arrow to move to end of URL and deselect text. Seems to be a standard keyboard shortcut across browsers. Works for me in Firefox, Yandex and Opera.

Ballas 6y ago
F6 everywhere else
kleiba 6y ago
Thanks, I'm talking about the mouse, though. I do use these keyboard shortcuts all the time but that is sort of orthogonal to the changed click behavior -- which is unlike for any other text field on my system.
roryokane 6y ago
The action that the recent change to Firefox made harder is not any the actions you just described how to do, but placing the cursor at a point _within_ the URL. The recent change made it require a click to select the whole URL, a pause, and another click to place the cursor, instead of just a place to place the cursor. I used to place the cursor inside the URL a lot and was disappointed when that action got slower. I was all set to give an example of why it’s bad, but right now, I’m actually having trouble thinking of such an example. I used to place the cursor inside a URL and then hit Shift-Command-Right to select the text after that, but I’ve just realized that clicking inside the URL and then dragging the mouse down is even faster. And I used to place the cursor near a section of the URL and use the keyboard to select and delete it, but double-clicking and dragging seems to take a similar amount of time in the examples I can think of. Hmm… okay, I’ve thought of a good use-case for placing the cursor inside the URL: adding a subdomain. If I’m developing http://example.com/foo http://example.com/foo and want to go to the staging server http://staging.example.com/foo http://staging.example.com/foo, I used to be able to click before “example” and type “staging.”. Now that requires two clicks and a pause, and the selection shortcuts above don’t help.

eitland 6y ago

He. My biggest ux annoyance is navigation-disappears-from-context-menu-if-any-text-is-selected. Expanding location bar is close though and unlike removing navigation arrows from context menus I cannot see any reason at all for it.