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Comment by sterwill | Hacker News Reader

I agree the new experience is poor, and "select all" part is the worst. I haven't needed or wanted that feature since 1993 and I don't know why someone thought it was the thing for me in 2020. Every desktop environment I've used provides an easy way to select lots of text (double- or triple-click). That's still how every other application works, so what's the point here? Who really needs to select-all-and-copy the URL bar all the time?

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Here's why selecting the entire URL is good. The most common action performed with the URL bar is to search for something or to navigate. Selecting everything helps you type your search query without having to double click or triple click.

Can you describe your use-case? Why do you need to place the caret inside the address bar and not have it all selected? In the few cases where I want to copy/delete a part of the URL I can do a 2nd click after I clicked once.

Ever since I saw this behavior in Chrome I wanted it in all my browsers. I'm very glad Firefox copied this feature.

I agree. The vast majority of all cases were I click on the URL bar is because I want to replace or copy what's there. In the few cases when I want to modify the address I can just click an extra time. Select all optimizes for the common case for me and probably most users.

I also like that the list of previous visited sites are shown wherever I click now, the down arrow wasn't really necessary. But I don't have anything under the URL bar, I have all my bookmarks next to it.

This is just my opinion :) but, clicking in the address bar in order to type a URL seems pretty inefficient. Why not activate the address bar with the keyboard, which you will need to use to type the URL anyway?

It's similar to typing a URL in the address bar and instead of typing Enter to navigate, you grab the mouse and click the little 'go' arrow on the right.

99% of people who use web browsers don't use shortcuts like ctrl-L, they just use the mouse to click.

It's kind of like asking why people don't just run irssi on ec2 if they don't want to be disconnected from IRC when they close their laptop: it just fixes it for a few nerds, not for anyone else.

I think the comparison is a bit exaggerated. People generally know how to use ctrl+c and ctrl+v. Keyboard shortcuts aren't that nerdy, some of them are explained in the Windows 95 User Guide.

Meanwhile UI consistency is useful for everyone, not just nerds. I think optimising software for some minimal set of lowest-common-denominator use cases like this is a slippery slope.

> The most common action performed with the URL bar is to search for something or to navigate.

Ctrl-K or Ctrl-L followed by the search text or address. If I'm pointing with the mouse, it's because I want to point to a specific location on the URL bar, not fat-fingering the whole bar.

I can tell you my interactions with FF's URL bar are now always: click once, type, realize I just deleted everything, furiously ESC ESC ESC, curse, click once, twice, wrong double click, wait to be able to single click, deep breath, curse, click again.

Getting the user to curse twice is the hallmark of successful UI design!

> I can tell you my interactions with FF's URL bar are now always: click once, type, realize I just deleted everything, furiously ESC ESC ESC, curse, click once, twice, wrong double click, wait to be able to single click, deep breath, curse, click again.

This doesn't add up. After "furiously ESC ESC ESC, curse, click once" you would already have put the cursor.

Ah, ok, that makes the feature useful now. </sarcasm>

That's not the thing that makes the feature useful. The thing that makes it useful is that it makes it easier to do common tasks.

It makes the feature useful if you only use your web browser. If you use a variety of applications on your computer in combination with each other, it’s also useful that they follow certain consistent UI design patterns so you don’t have to learn and remember how each different application works. That’s part of what makes PCs so much more powerful than the sum of the individual programs you run on them.

You don't even have to click a second time to select part of the URL. You simply click and drag at the same time. It's ideal for everyone.

Replace www with old on reddit. Removing some large query parameter before submitting to HN, removing the last parts of the URL to get to a higher section of a web site.

I edit URLs all the time.

I use Control-K to search, or click in the search box, not the URL box.

On Linux, selecting text normally places it in the X buffer (a clipboard, but not!). This change apparently selects the text while avoiding the buffer unless you click more, which is really odd.

I'm also surprised (well, maybe not really) that people have never learned about the Alt+D shortcut.

> The most common action performed with the URL bar is to search for something or to navigate.

No. The only thing the URL bar (Ctrl-L) is used for is to navigate to explicitly typed URLs or URLs in your browser-history.

The search bar (Ctrl-K) is used for searching.

Having 2 distinct bars and keyboard shortcuts for 2 distinct actions makes all this mess they are trying to “solve” with this mega-bar go away.

I don't want any of that. I don't need it. I will disable it and userChrome.css all and everything I can of it away.

God damn it.

I don't need default select all, but it's convenient for me. My top two uses of the address bar are to

1. enter a new url 2. copy the url

The first step of both is to select the entire url, so this is good for me. I have a few programs that automatically copy on selection, but thankfully, firefox isn't one of them. That behavior really irritates me.

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