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Comment by function_seven | Hacker News Reader

I just laughed when I saw your comment, and the bugzilla links are styled as "visted" (i.e. gray instead of black.)

I hate that behavior. When I click in the address bar, it's because I want to edit the URL. If I want to go somewhere else, I'll open a new tab, or use a bookmark, or click a link on a page. In the rare case that I want to type a whole new URL, but keep the same tab, I can easily triple-click or [Cmd]+A before I begin typing.

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That's interesting. In my case, I hardly edit urls manually in the address bar. Usually I end up on a site either by clicking on links or copying and pasting a whole url from elsewhere. So, when I click on the address bar it's almost always to copy that url. Exception may be if you are front end dev testing different paths on the browser in which case editing in the address bar could be common.

But the automatic single-click selection doesn't fill the X clipboard (meaning it isn't pasted by middle click), so when I want to copy it I have to triple click anyway. Since it looks like it's selected, I frequently forget to do so, which results in pasting something I didn't mean to.

Holy crap, I just realized this is why I've pasted the text instead of URL all these years!

You're referring to selection1, not the clipboard. There is (for me, on Arch) also a selection2, which I haven't investigated further.

Notably Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V operate on the clipboard, while selection and middle-click operate on (at least) selection1.

I single-click in address bar, which selects all (in Chrome), then I command-c shortcut to copy.

Which is my main use case for clicking in the location bar, copying the URL. So I appreciate that single-click selects all, so I can then copy with a keyboard shortcut.

I'm confused by your comment "when I want to copy it I have to triple-click anyway" -- I'm guessing you are on linux(?)... does triple-click or select alone automatically copy on Linux? (If select alone normally copies to clipboard, then I'd say it's a bug that it "looks selected" but hasn't copied to clipboard?)

This may be a thing where different behavior is appropriate for different OSes. Perhaps the FF devs who rejected the feature are also Linux users? I think FF wants to get market share beyond what can be achieved focusing on Linux users though.

Thats the only good thing about it... when the X clipboard has an error message in it that I want to search about, I dont need to worry about the search box being already full

When I click the address bar it's because I want to use the current tab to visit a new page, so select-all is perfect.

I think they should make this configurable though, I can see both sides of it.

Click -> select all

Ctrl+Click -> insert

Ctrl-T and start typing is much faster than mousing the cursor up to the URL bar

CTRL-L and then passing the new link goes to it in the current tab.

F6 and paste on Windows.

Or Ctrl-L.

But then I am left with a stale tab.

CTRL+L would be the shortcut, but often I browse without my hand on the keyboard, just the trackpad or mouse.

I forgot about that use case. I paste into and copy from the address bar all the time. But I still get myself sideways because I treat it like any other text box, and end up de-selecting the URL and having to try again!

You'd think after so long, I'd get used to the behavior and just single-click it. But apparently Pavlov would have me culled from his experiment :)

Time doesn't matter, because you probably interacts with many more normal text fields than browsers URL fields. And since they look the same, and act mostly the same, you won't learn to handle it correctly.

Most of the times when I interact with the address bar it's either to go to a different site, google something or copy the url - in all of those use cases I interact with the entire address to either replace it or select it.

I would wager almost anything that this is the case for the vast majority of regular users because most of the ones I've interviewed (N = 31) for a uni UX study didn't even know how to read URLs for the most part - especially not after the ? query part.

It's sad but true. Googling is probably Firefox's only feature left. After they trashed the dev ecosystem, removed file access, prevented 127. access and prevented ssl bypass for 10. and 192.168. broke markdown rendering, disabled CD access, made development painful, fsckd ftp, banned useful stuff on file:// removed anything useful from about: made developing inside Firefox a nonstarter, borked Web app, and generally broke any use case other than Googling/Shopping.

I doubt many people type much into the omnibar other than input for advertising platforms.

They should probably replace

http://

with

today I want to buy...

Firefox 55 has all of those features! I just never updated.

Sure, these extensions and workarounds are dangerous and inconvenient, but I do love well behaved web browsers.

Wow! Consider moving to Pale Moon at least, it will work with more sites and gets security patches.

What a load of bollocks and incredibly sad way of looking at things.

I've never noticed or been bothered by this. Typically when I want to edit a URL it's almost always deleting or replacing a substring in the URL. To do that I just single click + drag which highlights only the selected text instead of everything.

> I just laughed when I saw your comment, and the bugzilla links are styled as "visted" (i.e. gray instead of black.) > > I hate that behavior. When I click in the address bar, it's because I want to edit the URL. If I want to go somewhere else, I'll open a new tab, or use a bookmark, or click a link on a page. In the rare case that I want to type a whole new URL, but keep the same tab, I can easily triple-click or [Cmd]+A before I begin typing.

I'm with you on this. But to me the worst annoyance is how it tends to revert to a previous URL when the new URL fails to load, either because it truly failed to load due to an error or because it timed out while I'm walking through breakpoints.

When I manually entered a URL, the edit should stick even if it doesn't load, dammit.

When I click on the URL bar I often want to edit it too.

But it's difficult to click the leftmost or rightmost character to position the cursor.

So after clicking, I usually tap Ctrl+A (Cmd+A) to "select all" anyway, and then tap left-arrow or right-arrow to deselect and jump to the chosen end of the URL.

Cursor keys only junp to the end if it's selected. My keyboard doesn't have dedicated home/end keys, but I'd probably use the select-all-then-arrow trick anyway.

If you're on a Mac, Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E will send the cursor to the start/end of the line (respectively), just like in Emacs.

The use of Cmd instead of Ctrl for CUA shortcuts (and the resulting ability to use Emacs-style shortcuts without issue) is one of the few macOS features that I wish would propagate to other operating systems. The only other OS that comes close with this sort of usability is Haiku (which allows configuring either Ctrl or Alt for the CUA modifier, with Alt by default).

Just use the Home or End keys.

Or Ctrl-l (which I assume is Cmd-l on your platform).

Sounds like it should be user configurable, because I agree with you that selecting the whole thing by default is annoying.

Unfortunately user-configurability seems to be a out of fashion these days.

Firefox, despite the impression that HN might give, is still very configurable. The existence of about:config means Mozilla can add options without cluttering the more accessible preferences menu. I'm perfectly happy with the default behavior of selecting everything by default, but it does seem like the sort of thing that would be nice to make configurable by those who are willing to mess with about:config.

The linked bug report is literally that one of the about:config preferences has been removed and will no longer be respected.

It adds a lot of complexity and therefore cost unless you don't care about testing.

It used to be. It was for awhile the very first thing I'd change in the Firefox config.

When they added the omnibar they just ripped out the feature flag because reasons.

This is pretty much why I don't use Firefox. Things like this are a deal breaker for me. I really wanted to use that browser, so I even tried at some point fix it myself.

So which browser do you use, because Chrome has the same behavior?

Really? I use latest Chrome and don't have this problem

Don't forget F6!

Or Crtl+L, for those on 60% keyboards ;)

Alt+D is easier to press with one hand.

That's what I've been telling people! I feel like you're the only other person that knows that shortcut!

Unfortunately, Alt+D is also sometimes overridden by JS applications. This is especially annoying in Google Sheets.

Ctrl+L will still work.

Huh, funny. I think I notice this on my phone. But on my desktop it's always Ctrl-L so I never realized.

most of the time if I click there it's to copy/paste it somewhere else, and I'm pretty sure most people use it the same way.

Their behaviour makes Firefox match other browsers - Firefox doesn't need to be different for the sake of it.

It's more complicated than how you're presenting it.

The comments on the bug report point out that the new behavior makes Firefox on Linux different from other Linux applications, including some browsers. The devs said they want Firefox to be consistent across platforms, whereas the Linux users want Firefox to be consistent with the rest of their system.

The new behavior is also different from the behavior of text boxes rendered by Firefox.

Their behavior makes Firefox unlike literally every single other program with a text box, except the singular other browser people actually use. Neither browser should be different for the sake of it.

Sorry not sure what you mean? This is exactly how Safari, Chrome, and I guess others I can't immediately test work. Seems good to work as expected from other browsers?

They're saying, I think, that the textbox which is a URL is a special textbox but it shouldn't be. It should be the same as any other textbox in Firefox.

^the same as any text box on any OS since Mac Classic and perhaps before on the Xerox.

> It should be the same as any other textbox in Firefox

Editing strings in `about:config` seems to behave identical to the URL bar, and Ctrl+F behaviour is similar (but other search bars, like in settings, do not highlight all). Possibly more, just did a quick check of the text boxes I remember Firefox's UI having.

Yeah, and that's cool. I get being consistent with other browsers. I also miss being able to invert the choice with an about:config toggle.

I also know that I'm in the minority, and that maybe the size of my cohort is too small to add yet another thing to check during regression testing.

But I'm still mad about it :) Firefox always seemed like the browser for people who want to configure weird things, or extend it in all sorts of crazy ways. More and more it's becoming a me-too browser, and the only reason I'm sticking with it is out of a sense of duty to fight a Chrome monoculture.

Yeah they can't really win - do they try to keep happy a dwindling group who liked Firefox the way it was in the past, or simplify and streamline to innovate more quickly appeal to new users. It's probably impossible to do both. I'm firmly in the anti-customisation camp myself. They obviously aren't ever going to appeal to both of us.

It is possible to do both. The answer is customization, about:config already exists.

> I'm firmly in the anti-customisation camp myself.

> It is possible to do both. The answer is customization

Err well that’s not doing both then is it? That’s having customisation. I don’t want customisation. So that’s not doing both at all that’s just doing it your way and ignoring me.

Exactly ;-)

It doesn't need to be the same for the sake of it either.

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