[WORKAROUND] Selecting part of a URL, by clicking

[Moem]

This is a question about the default behaviour triggered by mouse clicking a URL. I'm using Mint 17.3 with Cinnamon, 32-bits.

I'm used to (in a previous life / OS) being able to select a part of a URL in the address bar of my browser (SeaMonkey), for example the part after the last slash, by clicking on it. (No mouse dragging necessary. Just clicking.) I can't remember if this is one click or a doubleclick, but it makes sense that it's a doubleclick, so let's go with that. Clicking once would select the whole URL, I believe. Not sure about that.
This feature, in any case, is immensely useful if you need to access a lot of pages by hand-editing the URL.

Now that I'm on Linux, I don't have this option anymore. Is there any way to make this happen? Does anyone even know what I'm talking about? I hope I'm making sense...

[Cosmo.]

Perhaps there was an extension installed? Somethings like that maybe.

[all41]

Now that you say this, I seem to remember being able to do this as well.
AIRC one right click would highlight the last entered character, double right click highlighted the last word, and triple right click highlighted
the entire line.
Now it's highlight everything or nothing in the url bar.

[Moem]

Cosmo.: No, no such extention installed. Default behaviour as far as I know.

All41: At least it's not just me!

[Cosmo.]

Without extension:

Enter in the addressbar: about:config and confirm the following dialog.
Enter in the filter bar:

Code: Select all

browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll

and double click it to switch it to false.
Double click will now mark the respective part of the address, for marking the complete address do a triple click.

You can also switch

Code: Select all

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll

to true, if you want to mark the complete address with the first click inside the bar.

[Moem]

That's interesting. My about:config does not contain browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll .

[Cosmo.]

I use FF 38.6.0 ESR. Chances are, that Mozilla has removed those values in the latest release version.

You can try to insert those values manually and set them as I described, but I would not expect to much. In this case an extension would be needed to get this back (if you find such an extension).

[Moem]

Thank you, I will try that (and not have high hopes). Thanks for looking at possible solutions!

[Cosmo.]

That's interesting. My about:config does not contain browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll .

I just launched my virtual machine with the release version of firefox from the official repositories. Both named values do exist there. And both work as expected. So double check.

[all41]

browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll False
browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll True

This works fine on FF 44
Thanks Cosmo

[helloimustbegoing]

M0em wrote:
That's interesting. My about:config does not contain browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll .

If you clicked on "Select All" (next to "Code") to copy the text, for some reason it put four "spaces" before the text. That would explain why it didn't show up for you. I almost didn't notice it myself.

I'd advise you to keep using Pale Moon though.

[Moem]

Not sure why people keep saying this line must be present in Firefox.I'm sure it is. I'm not using, or asking about, Firefox.

But I added that line, and I'm getting no result (good or bad), so I guess I will just need to use Pale Moon in these cases. So that's a partial solution, at least.

[Cosmo.]

If those 2 lines do not exist for you, than your FF-profile has a problem. The FF-profile in my testing machine is unmodified, so I can definitely say, that they are still available. all41 has also confirmed this.

To find this out on your machine do the following:
Close FF.
Open your file-manager and make hidden files visible (press ctrl-h).
Rename the folder .mozilla to .mozilla.bck
Start FF, this will create automatically a new FF-profile.
Check.

To get back to your old profile:
Close FF.
Delete the new folder .mozilla
Rename the folder .mozila.bck back to .mozilla
Start FF. Done.

[noviceLinuxMint]

Those lines don't exist in my FireFox, I'm running a fresh installation of Linux Mint.

[Moem]

If those 2 lines do not exist for you, than your FF-profile has a problem.

I'm not asking about Firefox. I don't use Firefox.

[Cosmo.]

@M0em:
I don't use palemoon and cannot judge. But reading this official announcement makes me think, that the options should be there - or they are missing because of a bug.

@noviceLinuxMint:
I just created a completely new FF-profile on the machine with FF 44 from the official repositories: Both lines do exist here for me, so I cannot confirm.

[Moem]

@M0em:
I don't use palemoon and cannot judge. But reading this official announcement makes me think, that the options should be there - or they are missing because of a bug.

Both options are present in Pale Moon, and working. It has this feature, which is why I consider it a usable workaround.
As stated above, I'm asking about SeaMonkey. I had one of those lines present in my SM profile, not the other; now I have both, but it makes no difference. As stated above, as well.

[Cosmo.]

In SeaMonkey it is probably still broken. Again, I cannot judge.

[Moem]

Ah! Well, at least now I know, so thank you for finding that for me. I now have more information, and a usable workaround, so the thread has been pretty useful.

[noviceLinuxMint]

@Cosmo

Thank you for this, it worked, sorry for my earlier comment where I wrote they don't exist, what I did at that time was, I copied each those setting options individually from your post and pasted them in the about:config page, copying like that added spaces before them, this caused them not to show up, now I realized that and deleted the added spaces before the setting command, and they showed up, I've adjusted them.