Great news for Linux users, after months of testing, Mozilla released today a new package for Firefox on Linux (specifically on Ubuntu, Debian, and any Deb
Maybe because it WAS consistent until the FF devs made the choice to change it? As I said before, if they decided to change the role of the right-click to no longer bring up a context menu, would you be ok with that as well? What about the difference between clicking on text in a browser article or clicking into a textarea? Those also have different roles, so if the devs decide that a user single-clicking into the textarea should automatically select the entire field, would that make sense to you? If I click on any text anywhere in any application, I expect to get the same results, and not have to remember how every application handles that click differently. Sure if I was clicking on something other than text then different actions might make sense in different applications, but the idea of a single click on the address bar selecting everything is akin to clicking an icon on my desktop and having all the surrounding icons also getting selected – it just doesn’t make sense and it’s not consistent with a single click in any other application.
So it’s ok that it works for your use-case and screw consistency? My point is that if you say it’s ok for one application to do things their own way, it basically invites every other app developer to ignore the standards and just do whatever they want. And no, single-click selecting the entire URL shouldn’t be considered a standard, it’s just something that changed in the last few years when one browser made the call and everyone else played follow-the-leader.
By the way, you mentioned that “all” of your browsers behave the same way . I’d like to remind you that Chrome, Chromium, and Safari all use the same engine so they’re basically the same thing. I think Opera stands alone but I don’t have that installed here so I can’t check it immediately. I’d ask if anyone had checked Exploder, but who in their right mind uses that except for work-related stuff where their developers can’t write HTML, and Microsoft is probably the ones who started this mess anything since they’re well know for ignoring standards. That really only leaves four unique browsers though. Not saying you didn’t consider this already, I just wanted to point it out in case you hadn’t.
If you want an example similar to an address bar, how about the current path in any file manager – I have Caja, Dolphin, and something called PCManFM here (not sure where that came from)? Once again, a single click does not select the entire path, it just places the cursor exactly where you clicked and nothing is selected. I can’t think of any other types of applications where you have some kind of a navigation bar, but that’s the closest example I know.
Maybe because it WAS consistent until the FF devs made the choice to change it? As I said before, if they decided to change the role of the right-click to no longer bring up a context menu, would you be ok with that as well? What about the difference between clicking on text in a browser article or clicking into a textarea? Those also have different roles, so if the devs decide that a user single-clicking into the textarea should automatically select the entire field, would that make sense to you? If I click on any text anywhere in any application, I expect to get the same results, and not have to remember how every application handles that click differently. Sure if I was clicking on something other than text then different actions might make sense in different applications, but the idea of a single click on the address bar selecting everything is akin to clicking an icon on my desktop and having all the surrounding icons also getting selected – it just doesn’t make sense and it’s not consistent with a single click in any other application.
Selecting the address with a single click does make sense for the reasons I listed in my first comment.
And it’s consistent across most applications that have an address bar nowadays.
It doesn’t need to be consistent with other kinds of text fields because that wouldn’t make sense.
So it’s ok that it works for your use-case and screw consistency? My point is that if you say it’s ok for one application to do things their own way, it basically invites every other app developer to ignore the standards and just do whatever they want. And no, single-click selecting the entire URL shouldn’t be considered a standard, it’s just something that changed in the last few years when one browser made the call and everyone else played follow-the-leader.
By the way, you mentioned that “all” of your browsers behave the same way . I’d like to remind you that Chrome, Chromium, and Safari all use the same engine so they’re basically the same thing. I think Opera stands alone but I don’t have that installed here so I can’t check it immediately. I’d ask if anyone had checked Exploder, but who in their right mind uses that except for work-related stuff where their developers can’t write HTML, and Microsoft is probably the ones who started this mess anything since they’re well know for ignoring standards. That really only leaves four unique browsers though. Not saying you didn’t consider this already, I just wanted to point it out in case you hadn’t.
If you want an example similar to an address bar, how about the current path in any file manager – I have Caja, Dolphin, and something called PCManFM here (not sure where that came from)? Once again, a single click does not select the entire path, it just places the cursor exactly where you clicked and nothing is selected. I can’t think of any other types of applications where you have some kind of a navigation bar, but that’s the closest example I know.