Firefox URL Bar

[Lakin Wecker]

On 1/3/06, James Livingston <doclivingston at gmail.com > wrote:
>
> On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 20:15 -0700, Lakin Wecker wrote:
> > I agree with Lukas, the default behavior should be to select the
> > entire address when the address bar is clicked on.
>
> Personally I'd find this very annoying, as I edit the URL much more
> often then I replace the entire thing. Pages I want to go to are usually
> either bookmarked, found on Google or links from other applications
> (most of which are clickable).


Personally, I find the current situation very annoying as I rarely edit
URLs.  In this case, arguing about it solves nothing.  One of us will
eventually have to use two clicks to do what we want. :)

I'm not an "average user", but I'm not sure how often people type urls
> in. Most of the people I know don't do it, because they can't remember
> them well.


I am also not an average user, so I only speak from experience of watching
others use a computer.  Very few would know that double clicking the URL
bar, or rightclicking and choosing 'select all' would let them select all of
the text.  Most rely on the current Windows behavior in order to change the
URL they are using.  Also, very few know how to use the bookmarking in a
browser or realize the usefulness of google and other search engines.  They
typically type in URLs which they have written down, or are on a business
card.

Next, they would rarely edit a URL.  The only situation where I can see them
doing this, is if they had mistyped it in the first place. Mistyping URL's
is a use case that supports the current behavior, although I think there are
more effective ways to help people find what they were looking for.

More importantly this is inconsistent with other applications, as I
> can't think of any GTK programs that I use where single clicking in an
> entry field selects all the text.


Agreed, and it is a good  point. However, I can't think of any GTK programs
where double clicking on a URL would result in it being entirely selected(I
just tried in a number of places).  However, reverting the URL bar to this
situation would severly reduce it's usability, in my opinion.  I think it's
safe to say that a URL entry in a web browser is sufficiently specialized to
be different from a generic entry field.

> A potential solution is to let a middle click on the address bar to
> > replace the current address with the address in the Xorg clipboard.
> > While, a left-click would select the entire address which would allow
> > people to use CTRL+v to replace the address.
>
> That sounds even worse that just selecting the entire things with a
> left-click, because as far as I can tell there would be *no* way to
> insert text from the PRIMARY clipboard (what you call the Xorg
> clipboard). Middle clicking would replace the current url, and left
> click would select it, which overwrites that clipboard.


You misunderstand me.  I meant this to be an option for those of us who use
the PRIMARY clipboard by selecting text and then middle-clicking to place it
where we want.  I meant that middle clicking would replace the current URL
with the text from the PRIMARY clipboard.

Lakin
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