Supportive Woohoo!

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Supportive woohoo! Yay Evan!

Original comment: Ctrl-L does not update PRIMARY.  The only fiddling going on is 
overriding GTK's default behavior so that we can a) select all of the text *without* 
updating PRIMARY; and b) update PRIMARY, in addition to CLIPBOARD, on Ctrl-C.

+1 for derat's suggestion that ^L not clobber PRIMARY.
That way you can navigate to a URL stored in PRIMARY with ^L, Delete, middle-mouse.
(Do we support shift-Insert for placing PRIMARY?  Then that could be merely ^L,
Delete, shirt-Insert.)

jlm: derat was explaining how things already work.

fwiw, i still vote that selection => primary. principle of least surprise and all 
that. if something selected is not in the primary field, it should be colored 
differently or something

This is the single most ANNOYING change the chromium team has implemented.  99% of the 
time I click on the URL I want to select all.  I don't want to have to triple click 
each time.  I landed on this discussion page from other threads where the vast majority 
of users wanted the select all feature.  If there are people who don't want it, why not 
make this a user-controlled option?  This was actually the single feature that 
gravitated me from Firefox to Chromium in the first place--it felt very refreshing to 
have the single click all URL.

The reason other people don't want URL to be "select all" with a single click is because they're grabbing or 
modifying a part of the URL. If select all is turned on by default, this makes that task much more difficult since 
the user must click on the URL and then stop and wait for a second until clicking again inside the URL to only 
select a portion of it. Triple-clicking to select the URL is much faster than click-pause-click-drag. Having "Select 
All" off by default is the best way to cater to both sides. I'd be fine with a user-controlled option, but the default 
for it should not be "select all."

#9: Minor correction: This was true for using a single click to place the cursor in an 
unfocused omnibox, but dragging over multiple characters in the URL would not trigger 
select-all -- the select-all didn't happen until the mouse button was released, and 
the code checked if the user had dragged first.

Haha. Well, I was just joining the conversation and responded to comment 8 without a complete background. 
Thanks for the correction, derat.

Shawn, there are lots of us that feel just as strongly in the opposite direction: the 
single-click select omnibox is the 1 feature that most annoys me about chromium, and 
the one that keeps pushing me back to firefox.

But I agree it would be nice to be able to customize, for users like you who really 
love the single-click select. I'd argue that default should be off as per arguments 
put forth in #19508 and #19648, but this probably isn't the place to debate those 
arguments.

I *love* the change introduced with this ticket. Just wanted to voice my support!

Just please keep the average end user in mind who is using a browser for browsing.  I 
am a web app developer myself (and I'm sure so are many in this forum) and understand 
the need to edit URLs quickly.  But for browsing, triple clicking drives me crazy.  
Notice that all windows browsers do single-click select, and aren't we trying to win 
over windows users to linux?

I found the Linux Chrome dev channel which has the older (single click select) build, 
so I'm happy again for now.

Shawn: According to http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/09/platforms-and-
priorities.html, the larger point is to make a browser that feels native to Linux, not 
have one that is just a port of the Windows way. And having click-once-to-select is 
totally not the Linux way, cause of the selection buffer. It's just like Amanda says 
in that blog post, for people who live and breathe in each platform, "rough edges in 
the user experience or operating system integration are like having a stone in your 
shoe no matter how well the rest of the product works," so therefore, "we are also 
committed to getting the details right for users on each platform."

Don't know why that URL got busted, but it's

http://googlemac.blogspot.com/2008/09/platforms-and-priorities.html

I vote to keep this change, too!

I'm not a web developer. I don't need to edit existing URLs. I think I'm an average 
linux user. But I find the old select-all behavior really frustrating because I do 
use the primary paste buffer a lot, and I hate omnibox trashing that. Also because my 
hands are trained to do single-, double-, and triple- clicks in all other text boxes 
on linux, and select-all omnibox walks all over that muscle memory. I find that I 
often had to click 4 or 5 times to get old omnibox to do what I expected. It was 
never intuitive.

But now, everything is right in the world. New omnibox works correctly. I don't have 
to think about how to use it, or how many times I need to click it -- it just works 
like every other text field in Linux. My fingers use it correctly, naturally. For the 
average user, I think that's the right thing.

I agree with jtolds, #14--the priority is to choose a behavior that's palatable to
the majority of real Linux users, not to cater to theoretical future Linux users. The
current behavior in all Linux web browsers I have seen is to not select all on single
click. I tested Opera, Firefox, Konqueror, Dillo, and Arora.

The URL field is a text field, and doing an automatic "select all" just isn't the
most efficient way to use a text field. This is especially true with tabbed
browsers--with older browsers, a user always had to delete the contents of the URL
bar to visit a new page, but this just isn't true today.

+1 tabbed browsing solving this. i'm okay with ^L or ^T selecting all of the url 
field.

IMO single-click-selects-all is broken on any platform. In every other textbox in the 
universe except some browser URL bars, clicking once places the curser where you 
click. Everybody is habituated to this. We use text boxes all the time. I've seen 
lots of people fumble with the URL bar.

Anyway, regardless of your opinion on the above for god's sake don't delete my X11 
selection when I click once anywhere... ever. Unless I'm clicking on a button that 
says "copy". If you revert this patch, and go back to the ever so counterintuitive 
(and somewhat popular) auto-select method, you don't have to delete the data I have 
in my X11 selection. I'm reminded of the Three Laws of Robots, the first of which is:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to 
come to harm.

The software equivalent is something like

1. Software shall not lose/delete/corrupt your data, or through inaction, allow your 
data to be lost/deleted/corrupted.

violations of this rule are more than just an efficiency issue, they make people 
angry. I am obsessed with efficiency, but to me preserving the users data is more 
important than some interface tweak to save a second here and there. And it's 
questionable whether this actually saves time or not, since it breaks habituation.

also frustrating is loosing the

selected stuff == selection buffer contents

equivalence, which you get if you try and do things like auto-select, but not blow 
away the selection buffer. i expect selected stuff to be in my selection buffer.

I vote for single-click select all. 
Back with this please.

Come on, it's ridiculous to say "It's not native to Linux, so we won't do it".  One 
click select-all was one of those little common-sense type things that Chrome Linux 
had, and no other Linux browser had.  Tell me, how often does one EDIT the url, 
compared to how often they CHANGE the url. For me at least, I frequently find use in 
single-click select all.  Please, go back to the old way.  

Having to triple-click to select the url does seem too much at least:
can't double-click select the url at least like on firefox?

(I actually liked some of the older behaviour when dragging the cursor
slightly with the mouse would select to the end of the url for example.)

I vote for single-click, or at the very least, make this an option in the settings!

since I only can star this issue instead of starring it as 'for' or 'against'
I just comment to voice my support for Not select all upon single click.
I Totally agree with what  jasonwoof have said on #19,
the 'single click select all'  thing just breaks the normal behaviour 
of textbox,and its garbling the primary selection is another nuisance 
which most X users like me can not tolerate.

I like it the way it is, it's very intuitive.

Please DO NOT switch back to the "single-click select all"!

Select-all with keyboard (STRG-L) is fine,
but when clicking with the mouse, you do it because you manually want to edit/modify 
the URL, and in this case it's completely counterproductive when the whole URL is 
selected.

As far as I remember, Select-All was "MS-Internet-Explorer 6" most annoying feature, 
please don't copy that IE6-attitude...

But doesn't every browser on Windows have single-click select all?  Not just IE6.

For me, single-click-select-all is just counter intuitive. And I completely agree with 
jasonwoof on #19. 
Please keep the new omnibox like that!

Well if this is going to stick around in new releases, can anyone tell me how to 
revert to the previous version so I can keep the old functionality?

This is going to be a annoyance to people who got used to the old method, and should 
be an option, in my humble opinion.

This should definitely be an option.  The user base seems to be split, so forcing it 
one way will leave the other half unhappy.

Give us an option, make the default single click insert cursor, and let it be.

Since there have been several mentions of Firefox behavior in this thread, the option 
IS available in the firefox config settings (browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll and 
browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll).  The default is doubleclick, unlike Chrome's 
triple click (have you ever tried to triple click on a netbook?).

In the meantime, I'm trying to wean myself off clicking altogether and use ctrl-L 
which seems like a better way of selecting the URL anyways.

As a past user of Firefox, when Chrome first didn't select all on single click, I 
tried going to chrome://about (in search of a settings page like about:config in 
Firefox) to change this.  Can we settle on something like that?

 Issue 27040  has been merged into this issue.

single click. as a number of people have mentioned, nearly anytime one needs to click 
in the address bar it is because one wishes to go to a wholly new url. it is only on 
the rare occasion that one wishes to modify or select just a portion of the url. "the 
linux way" is not necessarily the best way. at the very least, it needs to be a user 
option.

FWIW, I barely noticed this change.  When I click, it's usually to hit Ctrl-C, so I 
just hit Ctrl-A first without thinking about it.  I always open new URLs in a new tab 
these days.  On the other hand, I don't use PRIMARY much, so I'm indifferent.

From what I've seen of Chrome's attitude toward user options (which I think is 
correct, as a developer of different software), the chance that this will become a 
user option is approximately 0.  FWIW.

> nearly anytime one needs to click in the address bar it is because one wishes to go
to a wholly new url

I don't profess to know how everybody else uses their web browser, but when I click
the address bar, it is *always* to copy or change part of the URL. If I wanted to
enter a new URL, I would have used a keyboard shortcut to select the URL, or simply
opened a new tab.

I support keeping this modification!

Thanks

Sorry to have been so presumptuous.

> the priority is to choose a behavior that's palatable to the majority of real Linux 
users, not to cater to theoretical future Linux users.

Perhaps a mere six years as a Linux user is not sufficient to qualify me as a "real 
Linux user" but I am certainly not a theoretical future user. Some people like 
keyboard shortcuts and some people like using the mouse. If it is a simple matter to 
allow for a user option then why not allow all users to choose the behavior that they 
find palatable?

A configurable option would be great, as there are a lot of strong opinions in this
thread :). As someone else said, Mozilla's about:config idea is a great way to let
users configure low-level details like this that may not be important enough to be
part of the normal "preferences" menu. It would be great if Chromium exposed
something like that.

While I normally do love the design decisions the Chrome devs make, I have to agree 
with many of the "revert please" comments. I don't like having to triple-click to 
populate the selection and there's little more annoying to me than having the 
Selection not match what is actually selected. VERY counter-intuitive.

Isn't "the Linux way" to use a clipboard history tool like Klipper anyway?

Moz `clickSelectsAll` improved my life. Was glad to see it as default behavior in 
chromium/Chrome, and bummed to see it go. Splitting the difference with Ctrl+L is 
acceptable, and a geek pref interface is ideal.

LQ

I forgot to mention that Ctrl+L is more or less useless to me because my right Ctrl is 
remapped to Compose and it's almost painful to stretch my hand to hit LeftCtrl+L 
without taking my right hand off the mouse.

I didn't read all the comments 'til now, but I surely prefer the one click select all 
feature. But as I saw some people saying, it would really be nice to have the option 
to choose it and, in that case, I wouldn't bother this coming turned off as default.
And, as someone has said too, 99% of the clicks I make are to select all and change 
the URL.

Single click to highlight all in omnibox was one of the reasons I switched from 
Firefox to Chrome. The other was I could finally zoom web pages and graphics would 
keep smooth edges. I hope your not going to change that too? While I'm at it, The 
scroll bars are too narrow and if you want to make Chrome easy to use for baby 
boomers, fix the zoom so we don't have to press ctrl ++ every time we go to another 
page. Most of us over 40 have a hard time reading small print because of our aging 
eyes. Chrome is the reason I finally was able to get free of the Gates monopoly. I 
installed Ubuntu 9.10 and Chrome last week and after taking it for a test run I got 
rid of Windows once and for all...I hope I didn't make a mistake.

I guess I do have a strong opinion... ;) It just that it was such a pleasant surprise 
when I installed chrome and found that a single click did what I used to have to 
multi-click to do and then suddenly it was snatched away.

Chromium 4.0.237.1 on Linux seems, in various ways, a poorly thought-out release.

I ended up downgrading back to 4.0.223.5 because, in addition to this issue, it broke 
backwards compatibility with the internal saved sessions, removed the Linux toolstrip 
prematurely (on which the SessionSaver extension still depends), introduced broken 
browser action popups, and broke drawing of selectbox drop-down lists.

I am *so* happy with this change. *PLEASE* don't go back to the broken MSWindowsIE 
way, with single-click selecting all, breaking my primary selection, and breaking 
linux platform conventions.

It is awesome what you have done. Keep doing it!

I really vote for single-click select all.
At least put it as an option and It would be great! 

+ 1 for single-click select all

Yes single-click select all 

Or 

Double-click

And 

No Triple click

Tanks

I vote for single-click select all. I hate double, triple, etc-clicking when I want to go 
somewhere else. It's very rare that should want to modify the current url. This should be an 
option since this issue is so divided.

I can understand that following the platform conventions makes Chrome fit better with 
the other programs. However, for me the reason for switching to Firefox (and now 
Chrome) was to have a consistent experience on both Linux and Windows, both of which 
I have to use on daily basis. I like to customize my Linux to be as Windows-like as 
possible (seems easier that way) to avoid constantly switching my muscle memory.

That's why I'd prefer the convenience of single-click-select-all, though I mostly use 
keyboard anyway.

It just seems that there are so many different valid reasons to implement this one 
way or the other that what ever is decided, it's wrong. I'd welcome someone to have 
the balls to introduce a customization setting for this (and some other features).

+1 for the following:
* single click must select the entire line so that I can type in a new url and/or 
copy the existing url, as this is by far my most common use of the omnibar

* another single click must remove all selection so that I can modify the existing 
url; right arrow also allows this (starting the cursor at the end of the line)

* escape always resets; escape + single click selects entire line

* double click must always select a subset; e.g. select the clicked word

* triple click is irrelevant as it's not an obvious action to do; there is no deducible expectation; therefore I will not remember what it might do; therefore I 
will not use it

Why not make it a selectable option to not use single click!
The default should be single-click-selects-all to not scare away Windows users from 
Linux!

I would also vote to revert this change. The majority of people are not developers and 
do not often edit URL's.

Triple clicking is just impossible on a netbook, where Chrome really shines for me.

This is the best feature in Chromium in a long time! Please DON'T revert to single-
click select all.

I noticed that many of those asking for single click are Windows users or dual 
Linux/Windows users. Chromium's mission IS NOT to convert windows users into Linux 
users (is it?). Windows users should not try to dictate interface conventions for 
Linux.

Single-click select is a broken interface facet. It breaks primary selection buffer, 
it breaks all reasonable user interface affordances, and it breaks muscle memory for 
Linux users. It is counter intuitive and frustrating. Thank you thank you thank you 
thank you thank you for fixing it!!!!

From what I've read Chrome will soon be an operating system based on the Chrome web 
browser interface. Since the majority of people that will be using the Chrome OS will 
be former users of Windows or newbies, there should at least be an option for single 
click select all in the omnibar.

@56:

I haven't used Windows in over five years. I still prefer single-click selection and, 
with my use habits for the primary selection, single-click selection is a boon, not a 
bane.

I understand where you're coming from, but I think I'll stay on 4.0.223.5 until an 
option becomes available. (Unless the new features pile up to such an extent that I 
end up gritting my teeth, refreshing what little C knowledge I have, and patching it 
myself)

I'm glad I found this bug report.

Please *keep* the linux-default behavior of not selecting all text on a single click.

It's so much more natural for us non-techies to have fields act the same between 
different programs instead of having each one do its own thing.

Thank you.

Not sure exactly what the change is here. After fiddling with the address bar, I notice 
it still does a select all under many conditions.

Regardless, single-click-select-all for the win! I can click-drag or click-wait to if I 
really have to get detailed with my selection.

Just another vote for clicking not selecting all. Love the change. I'm a webdev and 
play with urls all the time. I understand some people wanting the select all, but it 
makes Chromium more of a pita to dev on and with the developer tools in webkit 
advancing I'm really trying to do more up front dev work in Chromium vs FF. 

I'm also a keyboard junky so using ctrl-l and ctrl-a if I click in aren't an issue to 
getting the whole toolbar. It's much more natural to me.

I'm a windows user and a linux user, and I HATE single-click that selects all in the 
omnibox. When Microsoft first started doing this with IE I hated it. When Chrome 
copied it, I hated it. I hate it on Linux even more because unlike Windows Linux's 
user interface hasn't totally gone inconsistent -- YET. Please let's not start.

If Microsoft would have had smart people in the first place they would have invented 
tabbed browsing instead which makes this not an issue at all. You want a clean url 
omnibox with one click? EASY -- click on the '+' icon for a new tab.

Why would Chrome need two different ways to do this especially when one of them 
breaks all sorts of things and makes users angry?

Please keep the not-broken auto-selection behavior.

I notice that the majority of people who don't like the new behavior are users of 
previous versions of Chromium, where the behavior was different.

They are justifiably upset. Anytime you change an interface, you upset people who 
were used to the old interface. No matter how subtle the change. This is just a fact 
of interface design.

But going forward this seems like the right thing. New Chromium users on Linux won't 
ever have to get used to the inconsistent highlight-on-single-click, so they won't 
have these pains when it changes to the platform consistent behavior.

Since there are far more future potential linux Chromium users than there are 
existing users, this seems like a definite win.

I can understand the point of those who are in favor of the change, but as a multi-
platform user (windows at work, linux at home), all I need is consistency between my 
platforms.

So leave the default as it is now, but offer some sort of option, even in a hidden 
config section(about:config comes to mind), so that users who want to go back can.

Firefox's about:config is a fantastic feature that should be duplicated in Chromium 
specifically for options like this one.  But that is another issue 
(https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=16362)

this bug annoys me daily :(

Basic use case:
- click in omnibox
- frustration
- take hands off mouse, press ctrl-L

Right, same thing here, except I just triple-click, which isn't much better.

+1

I prefer this behaviour (not clobbering the primary). Typically I will select 
something in a random non-chrome app (terminal, usually), then hop over to chrome to 
go to some page and paste. However, I can't do that without first going to the page, 
and then selecting the text in the other terminal (unless I use the secondary buffer).

This is great. Please keep this as the default.

It seems to me that since the omnibox is also used for google search, single click 
select all would be much more convenient. IMO there should at least be a hack like 
firefox has in about:config.

my linux box has been off the internet for about a month, and when i came back, i 
installed the latest chromium build, and -- hooray, it's finally stopped doing The 
Wrong Thing when i single-click the omnibar! i no longer have to hesitate and second-
guess what's going to happen when i click in a text entry field; this weird outlier 
is now fixed.

single click: place cursor. double-click: select word. triple-click: select whole 
field. everything is right now.

thank you for this change! internet high five, place hand here -->

I originally voted to keep single click select all, but cmroddy's jubilance has caused me 
to reconsider. I just don't know what's right anymore! Up is down, triple click is single 
click, Linux and Windows sleeping together.

I hope we have a decision soon, the suspense is killing me.

Second impressions, after a few days of using it: I really don't notice the
difference.  Either I'm clicking to copy the text, in which case I just hit Ctrl-A
Ctrl-C instead of Ctrl-C without even thinking about it.  Or I'm clicking to type in
a new URL, in which case my left hand is already on the keyboard, and again I hit
Ctrl-A automatically before my right hand even gets there.  I guess if I used PRIMARY
more I would be annoyed at having to use the keyboard (or drag the mouse or
triple-click) when copying, but I don't.

Sorry, what exactly is PRIMARY?

It's the selection which holds whatever text is currently highlighted, and pasted
with middle-mouse (and sometimes shift-insert).

http://www.jwz.org/doc/x-cut-and-paste.html
has the basics of PRIMARY vs. CLIPBOARD.

Going to a URL selected in PRIMARY is a frequent action for some users (like myself),
and is made very difficult if your web browser doesn't support middle-mouse to
navigate to PRIMARY (like Chrome doesn't) and clobbers PRIMARY when the URL bar is
clicked (which was the old behavior).

There is an extension that mostly implements navigate to PRIMARY (it only works in 
Linux and doesn't work on the new tab page).  It can be found here: 
http://www.chromeextensions.org/appearance-functioning/navigate-on-paste/

I have gotten used to this feature and miss it very much.
There is no "about:config" for chromium and no way to change this back.
I did notice that firefox allows this modification.

Fine, keep it as a default but give those of us who like the single click select all 
the option.  Changing default configs is one thing but arbitrarily taking away a 
feature that a significant portion of the user base likes is not the way to build a 
platform.  Just like Linux and open source in general, it's all about choice.  Even if 
you think my choice is wrong it isn't you place to take it away from me.

@76 Paul Keser:

Don't have expectations about how an OSS product should work unless you're willing 
to donate your time to help that project

IOW, don't complain about what chrome does in a negative way; describe what you 
want and why you want it, and look for consensus. If you feel strongly about 
something, work constructively with others to make it happen. Ideally, write some 
source code! :)

All things being equal, I would like there to be an option, but I expect the team 
actually working in the code will not want that, and I can't blame them. Every option 
adds maintenance costs to the codebase, and this is arguably a feature not worth 
those costs. The team will probably pick one way and commit to it, and let's not fault 
them for that if we're not willing to contribute more than our opinion.

Stop being so selfish and self righteous. Everyone knows this isn't OSS in the 
traditional sense, this is a google baby esp. UI wise. "the team actually working in 
the code" need to think about the general user first and give the geeks an option for 
what they want.

This one seems pretty close, so I guess I should cast a "stick with the new behavior" 
vote.

The single most annoying change done with the latest release. Please make it 
configurable; let user decide what to do with first click in the URL bar! I prefer the 
old behaviour; "select all"

 Issue 27728  has been merged into this issue.

Please go back to selecting all.  This is the most annoying feature of firefox on 
linux.  Objections to this make no sense.  When you go to the address bar you are 
going to a new url 99.9% on the time.  Serously, how often do you need to manually 
edit an url these days?  Why should this be made the primary function?  Now I have to 
click three times to type in an url, ridiculous.

I thought I would add that this does not break convention on Linux, IMO, since the 
omnibar is not a normal text field.  If it truly were a text field, or an address 
bar, then one could argue that single clicking to edit makes more sense.  However, 
since Google had the genius to make it a search box, an address bar and more - hence 
the omnibox - it does not need to fit the same behavior.  The usage should fit the 
application, not some general rule or "everyone else does it" excuse.  While you're 
at it you could take the tabs out of the title bar, put in a proper menu and make the 
status bar permanent waste space since that is the way other Linux browsers work.

Also ctrl-L is a non option for us netbook users with no right-ctrl.  And those of us 
using Chrome on multiple platforms should not have a major UI change like this.

Like some of the users said; Google made us all use the addictive way of getting 
around the web using keywords ( not in the negative sense ), so how often do we work 
directly with URLs. To go with those keywords, google made the great thing called 
omni bar (great!!); even though omnibar doesnt support keyword browsing ( yes I know, 
it does with some tweaks ), it helps reducing the UI clutter by merging search box 
and address bar together ( great !!! ).

Still how often do we type in a URL to get to a page; when ever we click on the 
omnibar, we either do that to start a new search or (rarely) to type in a new URL. In 
my case for the later one, I mostly start a new tab which will have the omnibar 
cleared anyways! If my argument stands; why do we need to double click or triple 
click to make select all?!

One thing I do like is that still for those who minimise browsing with mouse and use 
keyboard for getting to the omnibar, it still works and behaved with a select-all. 
But when I am lazy to use keyboard ( more likely ), I hate it when I have to do 
multiple clicks!!!

Please re-enable single mouse-click to select existing URL in the address bar. It is a 
pain to triple-click the mouse button to do so!

I was in favor of the single-click to select URL. I thought it was better. But after 
about a week of using the linux-default behavior, I like it better now.

It really isn't that hard to triple-click, guys. And since that's what I do in all 
the other apps to select a line, it actually seems easier now than single-click.

I'm converted. Thanks.

this issue need to be user customizable in firefox you can type about:config to fix 
this issue or leave it be and thats what open source is all about right user customizable.

actually i edit the contents of the URL bar on at least a daily basis. i reach up 
there with the mouse because it is the fastest way to position the cursor and select 
a *portion* of the URL that i wish to edit, or to append something, or remove a 
chunk... having the whole thing selected automatically *never* saves me a mouse click 
and *always* costs me an extra one, because i *never* come up there with the mouse 
without the intention of keeping some of its contents.

think about it briefly and you'll see why:

if you want to select the entire omnibar and start typing, by all means, just press 
ctrl+L or ctrl+K and start typing. if your hands are already on the keyboard, then 
you don't need to even move them. if your mousing hand is on the mouse, well, it's 
going to be at the keyboard soon enough because you're about to start typing a URL or 
a search so there's no need to push the mouse up to the omnibar to select the text 
you're about to trash.

the fact is that when you approach the omnibar with the mouse, the most rational and 
efficient reasoning would be that you want to change part of the contents, not all of 
it -- if you wanted to replace the whole thing you'd just press ctrl+L or ctrl+K and 
start typing.

the behavior of the omnibar with respect to the mouse cursor should reflect an 
expectation that the user wants to *edit* its contents, retaining some of that text.

@cmroddy:

There are a variety of reasons one might use their mouse to select all text in the omnibar. For example, if they've 
remapped RightCtrl to Compose and lack freakishly large hands to reach LeftCtrl+L or if they want to paste a 
new URL in without having to use the keyboard.

@cmroddy:

What about laptop users?! Mouse and touchpad doesn't really have much of a void in 
between! Especially when the keyboard is crammed up, it makes more sense to avoid 
those special keys and use the more straightforward touchpad or the nipple!

For netbook users, and new breed of net-tablets (with thumb operated mouse and no real 
keyboard) it is even worse!

I think it is kind of funny..  A lot of us users wanted "native" bahavior on Linux..  
So they made it "non-native", but did not clobber PRIMARY..  ie - triple click to 
select all..  Watching the number of users that agree and disagree is comical..

It seems that everyone who was a "linux advocate" just signed on to the new 
bahavior..  New "linux converts" wanted the single click back..

What gets me, is that the test was implemented to accomodate the linux users, but did 
it incorrectly.  Yet, it seems that everyone is forced to decide on single versus 
triple..

What happened to the double click select all..

I am thinking it is a developer trying to convert people in a sadistic way :)

Please just make double click select all and stop making the omnibar select something 
to erase PRIMARY!

-Greg

@oliver.greg:

First, I'm a long-time (6 years exclusively) Linux user who is in favor of the 
single-click behaviour, so, as written, your comment over-generalizes.

Second, stopping it from clobbering PRIMARY would be even worse. Aside from breaking 
the only indicator a user has for a behaviour and introducing a much less obvious UI 
inconsistency (something I found VERY frustrating when a KWrite bug did it), you're 
not taking into account the fact that some people copy and paste URLs a lot and may 
specifically want to clobber PRIMARY.

It's a heck of a lot faster than using CLIPBOARD even with triple-click because a 
"triple click twitch" is always going to be faster than the complex motions necessary 
to open a context menu or move one hand onto Ctrl+C.

As for your "developer trying to convert people in a sadistic way" joke, if I 
remember correctly, double-click is the Windows way... and believe me, that always 
trips me up something fierce when I'm downloading utilities onto a Windows box for a 
friend or family member.

 Issue 28355  has been merged into this issue.

I prefer the old single-click method. Very rarely do I need to edit a URL, and even 
rarer do I need to select an individual word in the URL (double-click). Having to 
triple-click for the most common use case is annoying.

What Chrome really needs is an equivalent to about:config so that this stuff can be 
tweaked.

One of the thinks I utterly hated about Firefox on linux was the single click 
highlighting everything, I love that chromium does not select all..

There are a lot of times that I want to select only a portion of the URL and paste it 
somewhere else or more commonly to type something on to the end of the url. If ^L put 
the cursor at the end of the URL bar I guess that would be okay for navigating to a 
page I know the URL of but clicking is what I do instinctively at the moment and 
would like it to stay that way..

If you're moving the mouse to the URL bar then surely it's very little extra effort 
to move it to the other end to select it all, or hit F6?

@napalm10: First, you assume that we're selecting URLs short enough that we can 
reasonably habitually click and drag from a muscle-memory point A to another muscle 
memory point B and get them in their entirety.

Second, not everybody reads the shortcut references enough to know about F6 (I didn't 
know about it and I'm a keyboard jockey who read the reference) and even if it were 
intuitive, it still significantly complicates the muscle memory necessary to copy-
paste the current URL into another application.

I vote for single click select all.

Why?  I've read all the other comments, and only one other person has pointed it out.  
The Omnibox is not a normal text box, quite frankly, it's the only reason I use 
Chrome/Chromium.  The single click select all behavior is genius because of the 
Omnibar's genius behavior (Search, URL, etc. all in one). All you people who say that 
single click should not select all because you need to edit the URL (do you people 
also never search?) seem to have never heard of click and drag.  I use Chrome in 
Windows exclusively and I do edit URL's, on the rare occasion that a link is busted 
or I know of another area of the webpage I want to get to and am too lazy to find the 
link on the page itself.  Since I know that single click will select all because this 
is what I do 99% of the time to start a new search, I click and drag over the portion 
of the URL that I want to edit.  It's that simple.
With the current behavior, Chromium is totally broken and useless to me, since it 
seems to be anti-search and therefore anti-Google, which doesn't make ANY sense.  
Triple clicking is never acceptable, and though it is a normal behavior of linux, it 
doesn't apply to Chromium just like the other things the other poster mentioned that 
are not in convention with the way things are done in linux (tabs being in title bar, 
menu).  
I use Chrome in Windows because it is the fastest, both in general internet rendering 
speed and in usability.  And don't tell me I should just open a new tab if I want to 
have a "clean" Omnibar.  I regularly have 30+ tabs open, and the idea that I need to 
open more is unattractive to me. Oftentimes if I'm reading something and something 
sparks my interest, I'll move my mouse up to the Omnibar, click once, type my search query, hit enter and be at a lovely Google search page with relevant info right in 
front of me.  Keyboard shortcuts don't cut it, I am (as are a lot of other computer 
users) using a laptop and keyboard shortcuts are oftentimes more clumsy than 
convenient, and they are usually never obvious.  I do understand the convenience of 
keyboard shortcuts, but they aren't for everyone.

TL;DR  
Single Click should select all
As it stands right now, the Omnibar is not an Omnibar and Chromium is severely 
crippled.    

Single click should select all. The people i know turns in FF on the 
singleClickSelectsAll. It has no sense to not make it default, if everybody uses it.

Single click to select all, PLEEAAASEE

Please don't go back to single click for select all! Keep it as it currently is.

Seriously, triple-click isn't hard. It's not any harder than single-click. Unless 
something is seriously wrong with your fingers.

In fact, triple-click is a lot *easier* than single-click because that's what 
muscle-memory has you do automatically to select all in a text field in linux. Why 
screw that up?

I am not able to apprehend the type of illogical thinking that would make people NOT 
like "single click selects all". When this option is set, it is one of the best 
features of firefox.

If you don't like it, fine. But it should at least be an option that can be turned on 
(like in about:config in firefox).
 

I´m pleased that the first version of "Chromium OS" has single click selects all!

Please bring back single click selects all, OR at least have it be an option. I've 
begun to use Firefox again because it has this option.

I am constantly frustrated by single click selects all, and will be glad to be rid of 
it.  And losing the clipboard when clicking on the url makes me turn into the FFFFUUUU 
guy.

I understand single click selects all is frustrating to some, but at least make it an
option please!

Yes please make this an option. There is no need for fascist posts about keeping one 
or the other.

I agree with the option, but maybe also chrome would need an "about:config" for 
advanced/particular settings like this one (I figure there is already an issue about 
this, but I'd like to remark the concept :P). I don't think it's a good thing to 
battle about those "little" things.

From the Chrome UI leads:
<q>We felt that an item in options [dialog] is too prominent but agree that we should 
have some way to let people change this. Our proposal is a context menu option on the 
omnibox which contains a default unchecked item that says "Single click to select 
all".</q>

I'm going to add this menu item to the bottom of the context menu.

Probably the best solution for all for there to be an option.  Now hopefully they will 
make the proper choice default and leave the hard to find checkbox(IMO) for the UI 
purists. ;)

I am really opposed to this and find it very unusual that the UI team has elected to cop 
out here when we've made hard decisions on most other cases.

Let's have it on or off.  Ben, Glen, why is this case different than other UI problems, or 
than this behavior on Mac and Windows?

@110: Because people like me are willing to maintain private forks or flee back to 
Firefox over it? (Private fork in my case. Firefox is nowhere near being zippy enough 
or visually compact enough for my needs.)

Personally, I don't think it's a cop-out at all. Rather, an acknowledgement that 
there's no such thing as a perfect set of hard-coded defaults that'll please 
everybody.

Couldn't this be changed by an extension?  I still don't understand why you would want 
to triple click all the time, but to some consistency is more important than function.

@112: The problem with moving things into extensions is that you have to define some 
kind of needs-lots-of-planning API or you wind up with Firefox's mess of a non-API 
where every extension of any significant complexity is mostly a big decision tree 
which compensates for Firefox breaking its API almost constantly.

...and unless you plan to severely constrain what changes can be made to Chrome's 
innards, any such API will probably end up looking like about:config's keys... in 
which case, they may as well be exposed to the user the way Firefox did.

Firefox's big problem IS pushing trivial things into extensions so people like me 
have dozens of extensions, most of them doing little things that should be default 
like "Make scroll-wheel switch tabs when used on the tab bar".

What's worse, pushing everything into extensions allows them to get away with "We're 
very stable" when, in practice, they're not because nobody runs with the base 
configuration they test against.

In short, it's a quick road to some mixture of bloat, insability, constant extension 
breakages, and various other stereotypically Windows problems. (I've often said that 
Firefox is the Windows of browsers. You can do just about anything with it and it has 
a huge extension community... but the architecture is junk and it's not as fast/light 
as the marketing department claims.)

After some thought, I don't think we should implement what the UI leads described 
initially.

The reason we allowed a variance from typical Chrome behavior for Linux was the 
prevalence of the selection clipboard.

For this reason, I think the selection mode should be determined by whether or not 
the selection clipboard is active. If it's active, clicking once inserts the caret. 
If it's inactive, clicking once selects everything.

This allows us to avoid adding an independent option, which sets a bad precedent for 
all platforms.

When you say active, do you mean when anything is selected?  I can see a lot of times 
when I have something selected and don't mean to paste it.  In fact, this is yet 
another annoyance with linux firefox I have to turn off, since I like using middle 
click to close tabs.  

If this is all about the selection clipboard, then I'm not seeing it.  Middle click 
pastes so why should left click be affected.

When it comes to behaviour of the primary selection in relation to Chrome UI 
elements, my views are very simple:

1. Selecting something must populate the primary selection... no exceptions. No 
deviation from of expected behaviours has annoyed me more than when KDE 4 bugs caused 
this kind of thing. The primary selection is already minimally-discoverable. Don't 
confuse or frustrate people by breaking the expected behaviour of the only way to 
populate it from the omnibar. (In other words, people have been trained to expect 
selected=PRIMARY. Even something like "single-click = select, triple-click = PRIMARY" 
would be confusing at best since people tend not to read documentation.)

2. Middle-clicking a tab must close it. It's the expected behaviour, the close 
buttons are small and sometimes hidden, and tabs are more like buttons than text 
fields, so using a behaviour based on "paste" rather than "close" isn't only non-
intuitive, but counter-intuitive.

@114: Isn't that going to be kinda unpredictable as a user?  Seems like the selection 
clipboard is almost always going to be active (but not quite).

Personally I'd prefer some solution where the visible behavior is always the same (and 
thus predictable), perhaps with Magic Hacks.  For example, click selects all but 
doesn't screw with the selection clipboard.  (I haven't thought through things, that's 
just a hypothetical example.)  Seems like we've tested a couple variants like this but 
I dunno how many.

please leave the equivalence that something being selected means it is in the 
selection buffer. it already drives me nuts that stuff selected in the webkit frame 
isn't necessarily in the selection buffer enough.

I agree with pkasting that switching based on whether the selection clipboard has 
data is going to feel random.  It often has data unintentionally.  I think it would 
also take an extra round trip to the X server to make that determination, but that 
might not be that big of a deal.

We started with single click selects all and replaces your select selection clipboard 
(bad if you want to paste a URL).  We then moved to single click selects all and 
doesn't replace your selection clipboard (bad if you want to copy the URL).  We then 
moved to single click to place cursor.

I'm not sure what other variations there are left to try, but I'm open to hearing 
them.

Single click selects all and doesn't replace the selection clipboard matches the 
behavior that we (and Firefox) have for ctrl-L.  Arguably, it is also semi-intuitive 
because you're not actually dragging to manually create a selection.  Finally, it 
optimizes the far-more-common case (replace URL) instead of optimizing for copying 
the URL out.  Therefore my position would be to use this behavior and avoid the 
option.

My impression was that we turned this behavior off as an experiment.  I then saw zero 
discussion anywhere about the results.  If there was discussion where the relevant 
Linux UI folks mutually agreed this behavior was bad, then we should leave the 
behavior as click-to-place-cursor and drop the option.

There are other routes we have not discussed, including Linux-only bits of UI near/in 
the omnibox to directly facilitate replacing or copying the URL (I understand 
Safari/Mac has something like this), if people are really unsatisfied with simply 
deciding on which route is best.

I don't see how zero discussion proves that people prefer click-to-place, in fact 
this bug post makes me think the opposite.  I also don't understand how this helps 
the selection clipboard either.  How do you paste into the omnibox? click at the end 
and hit delete until it's blank?  

How about allow middle clicking in the omnibox to paste selection over all, left 
click selects all, and you can click twice or whatever to manual edit the url.  That 
way you can copy or paste an url with the selection clipboard and it doesn't 
interfere with normal browsing. 

"Everything should work the same" sounds good, but there are always exceptions.  

Left-click selects all and puts selection into selection clipboard, middle-click replaces 
current omnibox contents with selection clipboard sgtm.

Isn't this bug the discussion of the results of the experiment?  We could move the 
discussion to the mailing list, but I'm not sure that'll be any different from this 
bug.

We already have special handling for pasting the URL (middle click on the plus), 
which we even added to the NTP tips section, but I don't think this is enough for 
people who want the select all behavior (e.g., it still makes copying the URL hard).

@pkasting, are you suggesting adding new UI to the omnibox to facilitate 
replacing/copying the URL or overloading some existing part of the UI?  I think the 
on mac, there's some space between the text and the border that can be clicked to 
avoid select all, but that seems like an implementation side effect.

I think this boils down to there being some users who use the selection clipboard as 
their main clipboard and some users who rarely if ever use the selection clipboard 
(they use ctrl+c/ctrl+p instead).  I think we should provide a workflow that works 
with either user type since this is about user interaction with apps other than just 
Chrome.

Please don't move the discussion to the mailing list. The lack of a "subscribe to just 
this thread/bug/issue/whatever" system keeps me from subscribing to mailing lists.

(I have time-management issues and I'm already part-way through writing several 
utilities which do things like yanking "new chapter posted" notifications out of my 
GMail box using IMAP and storing them in a list I'll only see when I'm looking for 
something to read as a way to compensate)

Oh, I almost forgot. To clarify my workflow, I use the selection as a special-case 
clipboard. I normally use CLIPBOARD (Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V) because I've never trusted apps 
to not clobber PRIMARY, but when copy-pasting things from the browser on one monitor 
to BasKet Note Pads or KWrite or some custom app on the right, I use the Selection 
because I can copy and paste something with absolute minimum effort. (two clicks with 
the omnibar, a drag and a click with page content... though WebKit has always had a 
problem with un-intuitive behaviour when dragging through whitespace to select)

Hence why I'm loathe to lose PRIMARY's current behaviour on the old version of 
Chromium I've asked my package manager to retain.

At the same time, I tend to use several dozen tabs at once and my RightCtrl is 
rebound as Compose, so neither one-handed Ctrl+L nor opening a new tab and closing 
the old one are acceptable options. (And two-handed Ctrl+L is a hugely inefficient 
option I'm not even willing to consider)

"Isn't this bug the discussion of the results of the experiment?"

No, discussion like this on bugs is noise.  I'm referring to actual physical f2f 
discussion amongst the developers.

"I don't think this is enough for people who want the select all behavior (e.g., it 
still makes copying the URL hard)"

It's not that hard to drag-select the URL if you really, really want to copy it out.  
Or triple-click.

"are you suggesting adding new UI to the omnibox to facilitate replacing/copying the 
URL or overloading some existing part of the UI?"

New UI.  But personally I don't think this is the best route.

"I think we should provide a workflow that works with either user type since this is 
about user interaction with apps other than just Chrome."

It depends on how you define "works".

I'm going to draw a line in the sand here and say that I think single-click select-
all w/o replacing PRIMARY is the overall best behavior.  This is based on my own 
opinion, how other browsers on Linux behave, how Chrome behaves on other OSes, and 
observations of developer and user reaction to the three different behaviors we have 
tried.  I believe we should return to this behavior and close this bug.

There is yet another tweak that no one has mentioned, which is that we could make the 
single-click "select all" draw a different-styled "selection" (e.g. faded halfway 
between the background and the selection background) to try and make clear that 
PRIMARY wouldn't be replaced.  This runs the risk of confusing users in multiple 
different ways.

I still say no good can come of disassociating selection from PRIMARY. It's such an 
expected thing that, to the best of my knowledge, there isn't a word in Linux 
developer terminology for "selected but not pushed to PRIMARY".

If you must, go with the 'different-styled selection' idea for single-click and let 
triple-click populate the primary selection.

@126 pkasting

"discussion like this on bugs is noise" -- while this may be true, the bug
description itself asks for "a comment indicating why" this change negatively impacts
"you" (a user) -- and Anthony Laforge wrote on the Chrome Releases Blog that we
should "Leave a comment on the bug" -- so while I agree the SN ratio is lower than
you might ideally wish, you did ask for and receive the honest input of some
impassioned users!

In summary, my feelings are hurt :) And, I mostly agree with what you want (that
being, please, please, single click select all) -- but a differently styled highlight
selection is egregious over-engineering.

I am glad that the devs are swinging back around to this issue, though, thank you!

@pkasting #126

I think cognitively dissociating "selected" from "in the PRIMARY selection" is a poor
ux, for those who care about it.  Personally, I only end up frustrated, wondering how
the heck I get something into the PRIMARY selection buffer, if not by hilighting it.
 Even if you do some sort of fancy styling, that's great, but _how do I get something
into the PRIMARY selection buffer_?

Considering the behavior of keyboard shortcuts is misleading since, nowadays, the
PRIMARY buffer is essentially a mouse-linked buffer — people who intend to use it
will use the mouse, in part because it's more precise and much faster than trying to
do the same thing with the keyboard.

Finally, I think #121 presents a workable compromise, one which @thakis agreed with,
where you keep single-click to select all, but also allow replacing the URL with
middle-click on the omnibar (which is predominantly why I click on URLs — it's a lot
faster to replace a URL than to open a new tab, figure out where to drag it, drag it
there, and close the old one)

I vote for single click select - when I click the omnibar I either want to do a search 
or type in a new url. Triple-click is a pain (IMO). If it can't be the default then 
please make this user definable.

How about gathering some statistics about how ofte user triple-clik in the omnibar 
compared to the other types of clicks to determine the default?

Please don't select all on single-click. I didn't complain before because chrome is 
still beta and I assumed that this was just something that had come over from Windows 
into Linux and would be fixed soon.

Now that I know it was a conscious decision I'll add my 2c. I hate losing my current 
selection when clicking in the URL.

There are 2 times I click in the URL box

1 to grab the current URL - this should be triple click like every other app
2 to edit the current URL - in which case selecting it means I have to pause and 
click again

The idea that chrome should be consistent across platforms has little validity for 
me. How is that supposed to scale this doesn't scale when other apps decide adopt 
this policy? Or is chrome the only one that can do this? When I use Windows I expect 
Windows behaviour from everything and the same goes for Linux desktop (a chrome-os 
desktop is entitled to behave completely differently to a Linux desktop if it wants 
as long as it's consistent across chrome-os apps).

@13 said "aren't we trying to win over windows users to linux?". You don't do that by 
convert Linux into windows one input box at a time!

I just hate having to do triple click... i mean omnibar is also to search in the web, 
and doing a whole process just to do a quick search plain sucks... if i have to do a 
little change to my url (1 time every 16 weeks) i will do the triple click with no 
problem 

Area-UI-Features label replaces Area-BrowserUI label

I vote for single click to select all, if not, can we have an option please?

i have just stopped using chrome. END OF!

I've just begun using the Linux Chrome beta.  I normally use Firefox on Linux, and 
Chrome on Windows.  This issue is bugging me as I would prefer either the select-all 
Windows behavior, or the Firefox double-click behavior.  The triple-click is something 
I don't like doing.

Can we please have the single click select all back? It is so much easier. I love 
chrome on windows for this one reason.

Why would any one want to part select the url field? This is definitely not the common 
use-case.

Has a decision been made?  Is there going to be a change(hopefully for the better)?   
Is anyone working on an extension to fix this?

Opening up a browser almost  always is followed by typing in an URL in the address 
bar. Single click to select all becomes the obvious choice since the user would always 
need to replace the existing URL being displayed.

Really I'm wondering who can make up such a bad idea... triple click is such strange behavior for normal users browsing the web. Please change this to single click again or 
make it an option so people can choose.. 

Make it configurable and please EVERYONE

Look, people. Whether you like it or not is totally obsolete. Can't we just make it a 
configuration option? Please? It really can't be that difficult to satisfy both 
parties. I really hope we can see this in the settings soon...

I'm in serious favor of this change, BTW. I hate having to triple click, it's just so 
awkward! :(

I really like tiple click, I think is the way it should be, but for the sake of 
community there should be an option to configure this behavior.

 Issue 33536  has been merged into this issue.

Can't anyone solve this with a simple extention?! I'm reverting back to Firefox, 
because it has "right click = select all"...

Single-click select-all is a terrible choice on Linux. Triple-click select-all is 
CORRECT.

If you are using Linux and are not already used to "triple-click selects-all" in 
every other application, maybe you need to use Linux a bit more to get used to it? 
This isn't Chrome's fault. Chrome is currently following platform conventions, 
correctly. And it shouldn't break those conventions. Chromium is doing the right 
thing.

So maybe the "fix" is for users who don't like this behavior to switch to another 
platform, like Windows?

@j2u44u: 
" Chrome is currently following platform conventions, correctly. "
Which text book were you referring to?

@dckorah:

http://dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_14.html#SEC197
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/linux/run/ch11_04.htm

among many others.

"Click the left mouse button and drag the mouse over text to select it. You can also 
double-click the left mouse button on a word to select that word, and triple-click 
the left mouse button on a line to select that line. Furthermore, you can click the 
left mouse button at one end of a portion of text you want to select, and then click 
the right mouse button at the other end to select all of the text between the 
points."

You can make an argument that it is correct to treat the entire url as one "word," so 
that double-click selects the entire thing. I'm sympathetic to that argument. So, 
apparently, were the Firefox team, because that's the behavior they chose.

What is absolutely clear, though, is that single-click select all is wrong. It not 
only breaks convention, but it destroys the PRIMARY selection buffer, which is an 
even worse sin in Linux/Unix/X11.

-j

Honestly..! Does it matter?

Ultimately, it has to be about user choice. There is nothing wrong in being a *NIX purist though. 
Sadly, I cannot afford to be a purist and ditch other popular UIs altogether. Something I must say 
here is, most of the use-cases from the two links really dates back to the UNIX days when only the 
elite used to use them. Hasnt the world moved on from there ?

To me a piece of software is about comfort and being more productive with it. Tripple click to 
select a line from a page of text; I can understand. But from a single line input like the omnibox; 
tripple click makes me twitch! It is like having to give an extra slap to make it work!

"So maybe the "fix" is for users who don't like this behavior to switch to another 
platform, like Windows?"  

Real nice attitude to have, sad to see Linux is still being held back be people with 
attitudes like this.  

This is the single biggest problem with Chrome right now for me.  Triple click is 
terrible for usability, even if it makes the zealots happy.  Could we get some action 
on this bug? A setting or extension seems like the way to go.

Held back? UI consistency (and the totalitarian control required to enforce that) is 
what people praise Apple for, but when it's Linux, even if there is some kind of 
loose UI consistency, everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too.

If Apple changed how Mac OS X worked every time someone complained that it didn't 
work like they expected from their Windows days, OS X wouldn't be nearly as cool.

j2u44u is spot on. If you want to select all faster than triple click, hit control L, 
or open a new tab. What is wrong with those things? If you expect cross-platform UI 
consistency (if that's even possible whatever that means), get used to those instead.

I have to agree with kpprom.. from a normal every day user perspective I really don't
understand the logic for three clicks.. my parents nearly understand the double click
and chrome for linux is introducing three!! clicks. Believe me, lot's of ´normal'
users don't use things like control l. I think I will stick with firefox.. happy I
have a choise :-))

Please, whatever the final result in terms of highlighting, single click MUST NOT 
replace the primary selection that is. Overwriting user data (which might exist 
nowhere else but the primary selection) is not an acceptable side-effect of what is 
effectively just switching focus.

@151: The difference between MacOS and Linux is that, from MacOS, people expect 
consistency at the expense of choice while, on Linux, people tend to expect choice at 
the potential expense of consistency.

"If you want to select all faster than triple click, hit control L, 
or open a new tab. What is wrong with those things? "

Ever use a netbook?  My Dell doesn't have a left control, so control-L is too hard.  
Opening a new tab every time you want to visit a new site makes no sense.  

Sorry left control is all I have, no right control.

Just to drive home the point that triple-click is *standard* behavior for text fields 
on linux, try a little experiment at home:

Assuming you are running gnome, run Applications->Accesories->Calculator. Select the 
text field and type in "123 456 789". Single click on 456. Now double-click 456. Now 
triple-click 456.

Try Applications->Accesories->Character_Map. In the "Text to copy" field, type in 
"the quick brown fox". Single-click on "brown." Now double-click "brown." Now triple-
click "brown."

This is how Linux works, folks. Until Unix adopts something other than X11, I don't 
see it changing.

re: @154, on Linux, people tend to expect choice, but they tend to abhor defaults 
that break core system functionality.  Breaking X-Selection, even if it is just 
*visually* broken (by selecting without copying to Primary), will be met with fierce 
resistance and derision every time.

@157: I never said the change should be reverted (I may have in an older comment, but 
if so, I changed my mind long ago). I just think that Chrome shouldn't make GNOME's 
mistake of not even offering an option because "it's pointless clutter" or "it's 
confusing to Granny".

Also, not to be insulting, but I'm the exception to your statement. For it to be "met 
with fierce resistance and derision every time", I'd have had to have hated it at 
first sight but, since I spend a lot of time copy-pasting batches of tabs into KWrite 
to work around the lack of an "import/export tab URLs" plugin, I actually welcomed 
the ability to copy to PRIMARY with a single click. (It helps that, on the rare 
occasions when I need my old PRIMARY back, I can just use Klipper's history dropdown)

In fact, I stopped following updates and stayed on 4.0.223.5 as soon as the updates 
blog announced the change and I haven't changed my mind yet. (Yes, that IS a version 
with stuttering HTML5 audio and no support for the Chrome Extensions site)

I have to tell you, when I started using Chromium and I noticed that a single-click 
would grab the entire URL so I could quickly delete it and enter a new one in, I 
thought it was one of the most useful changes I had noticed with a web browser in a 
long time.

I understand that it breaks other conventions regarding single/double/triple clicks, 
but I just wanted to say here that it was nice while it lasted.  Maybe a 
configuration togglebox we could change somewhere would be very nice to get this 
feature...maybe not.  In any event, thanks for the work that everyone is doing on 
this browser.

Double click should select the entire URL.  The triple click feature is why I keep 
going back to Firefox.

The default on a Mac text field is single click to select the text field and place the cursor 
at the point of click, double click will select a word and triple click will select the entire 
contents - thats how every text field on the system pretty much behaves, and should be 
the default for Chromium too - however I understand how some people may prefer it 
the other way - so why not have an option to configure for it?

Firefox has single-click select all enabled by default as well, and it drives me mad, but 
at least I can go to 'about:config' in Firefox and disable the setting.

It is annoying having different behaviour in the same application on a different 
platform. Let the user choose. 

A good minimalist interface should not be restrictive, rather, it should encourage 
individualism.

I would go for an option in the right-click drop-down menu on the "Omnibox" to set 
the default mouse behaviour when clicking - in both Windows and Linux versions of 
Chrome - to toggle Windows (single-click selects all) behaviour or Linux (single 
click moves insertion point to cursor position) behaviour. This would maintain user 
choice, rather than dictating user behaviour. 

Multiple-click actions should be minimized on all systems for health (RSI) reasons. 
Three clicks is too much. These actions are also more difficult to perform 
consistently on other input devices, such as laptop touchpads and trackballs, touch 
screens etc.

Although the Firefox "about:config" functionality is cool, it requires scrolling down 
through hundreds(?) of lines of variable options, with the possibility of messing up 
the browser system.

It would not be out of place for Chrome to allow signed-on users on whatever platform 
to change the way their Chrome browser behaves (on whichever machine they use it) via 
a hierarchy of web pages - ideally a combined help and browser configuration - 
further reducing the menuing options required - confirmation by the user's password 
to make the changes global and permanent or just temporary for the current session.

I can understand how people support the typical Linux behavior.  That being said, it 
is annoying that Chrome behaves differently in Windows than it does in Linux just 
because of the OS.  99% of the time when I click on the address bar, it's to type in 
a completely new URL - not to make a correction.

I am a Chrome user because of the common-sense approach and the usability that seems 
"natural".  It doesn't feel natural to follow typical Linux protocol in a web 
browser.  Since people are so divided in this, then I would be fine with a user 
option to make it single-click for selecting the entire URL, or the classic Linux 
triple-click.

Yeah, I mentioned the about:config option in Firefox merely to show that while 
Firefox defaults do go against the system norm, they can at least be tweaked if you 
care enough.

 A simple user preference on this should be fine, but I think it is important for an 
application to integrate itself properly with each OS it will be compiled for. A text box 
should behave how a text box behaves on the particular system, otherwise when a 
user tries to interact with a particular control expecting it to behave like all other 
controls of the same type, they're not going to get a consistent expected behaviour.

Again, I'm only stating the Mac OS X defaults for text boxes here, but a single click 
inserts the cursor, double click selects a whole word and triple click selects the entire 
box. :)

@164: Same defaults as GTK+ and Qt apps on Linux, so aside from Windows (which I 
haven't used in over half a decade, so I can't be sure about), it's become de facto 
standard... not that I'm complaining. For "proper" text boxes, that's good.

The point is in what the user thinks of things as... hence the uproar from my half of 
the people here. We don't think of the omnibar as a textbox.

...not to say I'm disagreeing with you. I just wanted to clarify why, to us, the 
"intuitive" behaviour is counter-intuitive and in need of a customization option.

Ah, yeah I see where you're coming from then. I think a user preference is probably the 
way to go then, leaving the single click select all as a default I guess. Other than this, 
which I still forget about and get caught out by several times a day, I'm really glad I 
migrated over to Chrome :)

These platform-specific issues are growing: 
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=35817
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=35678

I'd be happy to submit patches supplying command-line based configuration options. This 
is just google flags stuff, right? What are the chances of a patch like that getting 
accepted?

I recently switched to using Linux as my main OS after years of using MS Windows. I 
was an early adopter of Chrome in Windows and got very used to the "one click selects 
all method" in the address bar and I love it. Very glad to have Chrome in Linux now 
but I hate the way it works differently in Linux. Please make it a user option. I'm 
really surprised there are so many people who want the default behavior but I don't 
like it.

Just to add another insight here - the way Safari works with this is that clicking into 
the text box will insert the cursor where you want it, but if you use the keyboard 
shortcut to get into the address bar, that causes it to highlight all the text. 

This allows you to quickly press Command+L and start immediately typing a URL, as 
the previous one will be highlighted ready, but if you use the mouse to get into the 
address bar, it behaves as you would expect a text field to on a single click.

Best of both worlds!

@Comment:170
May be worth reading the previous discussions.

On linux it is Alt+d or Ctrl+l; I agree that you can get there by that, but the issue 
is not all users have the luxury of being able to use these combinations. Eg: netbook 
users. So for them there is still a valid reason to make "single-click-select-all" an 
available choice.

@Comment:171

The issue for me is data loss. I must not lose the primary clipboard selection just 
by single-clicking on the omnibox, not least because I often want to paste that 
selection in these.

I can get used to any number of clicks. I can get used to chrome's omnibox being 
different to everything else on my Linux desktop.

I cannot, nor do I want to get used to losing what I had in the clipboard.

@comment:172

Its all about habits isn't it?

In full honesty, I am at heart a Windows user who had enough with it and switched to 
Linux a few years ago. So for me clipboard managers are the way of life. I rely on 
PRIMARY only when I am sure I can, like within the same application, and purposefully 
avoid using it while going to the address bad of browsers. Instead I use the 
clipboard content saved there via a key combo ( usually Ctrl+c or Ctrl+Ins ). It 
works for me!

If we are to use PRIMARY with chrome, the problem is that we have to press and hold 
your backspace or delete to get rid of the content there before pasting anything from 
PRIMARY! Isnt that waste of time with a long URL ( which happen to be very common 
these days )

@comment:173

It's possible to highlight without replacing the primary selection. In firefox, 
select some text, hit ctrl-f, type in a search play, click somewhere else, now hit 
ctrl-f again. You old search is highlighted but if you paste, you still have your 
original selected text.

I don't know the details but I imagine it's called _primary_ selection because it's 
possible to have other selections too.

All that said, I find firefox's single click to position the cursor, double to select 
all quite comfortable.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Look, people. Regardless of whether or not selecting the whole URL something you 
like/believe is correct/think is more natural, can it really hurt to throw in a radio button 
in the preferences?... Seriously. Please. Having the option won't hurt, just help :-)

Please at least provide an option to enable/disable this

I use Chrome on Windows for work and Linux for personal stuff.  Having
inconsistencies across platforms is annoying (and bad for new converts).  I vote for
configurable mouse click and defaulting it to behave the same out of the box across
all platforms.  I prefer single click selects all, but a configurable option should
allow everyone to enjoy Chrome without annoyance.

What I'm trying to say is that if you don't WANT the URL to be selected with a 
single click, then don't configure chrome to work that way.

It does not hurt you in any way to have a radio button in the preferences so those 
of use who do like it can use Chrome the way we want to. It can only help.

An option would be brilliant, I hate one-click-select-all, it's a complete pain.
Set the default to what most users want and give the option to change it for everyone 
else.

not having an option is pretty lame. i used to use chromium and this change is the
reason i don't anymore. even firefox has the option. 

i strongly agree with tarpein's comment #178, that inconsistencies across platforms 
is annoying (i also have to use windows at work, but linux everywhere else), and bad 
for converts. no matter how it's chosen, keep it the same across platforms.

on how it is chosen, my vote is in favor of selects-all, with a preference to change 
of course. in response to comment #173 worried about data-loss, why not just hit the 
middle mouse button to paste the primary rather than click first and then paste the 
primary? on firefox right now in linux, i've enabled the click-selects-all option, 
and if i move the mouse above any place in a url i'm modifying and middle click, it 
inserts the primary into the url. then the cursor is blinking and available to edit 
the url. no data loss, and click-selects all had no impact.

but fundamentally, IMHO 95% of the time the "average" user clicks the address bar 
they want to type a new address, hence my preference for single click-selects all.

BTW, chromium developers are dead for me :(

Don't why they like doing absurd things like this and remove/hide protocol part from 
the URL bar now

BTW, where chromium is heading? Do the developers have any idea? Are there any solid 
reasons behind hiding protocol part from a URL?

For those who haven't bothered to research, "select all" and "select a portion" work
perfectly well at the same time.

Mouse-down = Caret placed
Mouse-up = If caret moved, select the selected portion.  If caret did not move,
select all.

This is how Firefox works with browser.urlbar.autoFill set to true.  What possible
problem could anyone have with this?

Correction: The Firefox setting is browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll.

version: 5.0.376.0 (Developer Build 44292) Ubuntu

I click down and release the mouse no-selection happens for me. Am I missing 
something?

Sorry.  I was explaining the ideal solution (according to me :)  It is not
implemented in Chromium for Linux.

Well, I think we all know that a tick box is ideal.  But we also all know that when 
Google makes up their mind, that's usually it.

I guess this is something they want to force feed the world in an attempt to change 
it.

Look at crApple lately..  They pissed each other off, and since google is mad at 
them, they are thumbing them back by packaging flash into chrome..  I am not a 
betting man, but I would go so far as to place a bet that youtube will remain non-
html5 compliant for quite a while just to piss them off more..

Google has a lot of great things and ideas, but unless ~75% of the public disagrees, 
they do not bend outside of their ideas..  Their egos are their biggest downfalls..

I am not pointing the finger at everyone, but definitely some of the decision makers 
:)

@188

Maybe you're trolling?

Chromium devs at one point were about to work on this, but there was some confusion 
on the proper design and, from what I can tell, internal discussion resulted in this 
being de-prioritized.

Note that this bug is NOT closed! If someone puts together a patch, I wouldn't be 
surprised if it either landed or received constructive critical review.

Offtopic:

YouTube has an HTML 5 beta, youtube.com/html5

Google is releasing an open-source video codec. 
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/04/13/reports_says_google_will_open_source_on2_code
c_in_may/

Steve Jobs remains Steve Jobs. You know he once demanded designers retrace a circuit 
board because the lines weren't spaced to his liking? 
http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=PC_Board_Esthetics.txt

Anyway, somebody write a patch for this darned bug please

-- Dan

@daniel
That's great to hear.  Since Linux Chrome used to work this way and Windows Chrome
still does, I don't think a patch is necessary.

The patch to change it is a one-liner, but it won't be committed until it solves the 
issues raised in this bug.  Nobody who leaves a new comment on this bug reads any of 
the other comments anyway, so I doubt that will happen.

@tony.chromium having you been sleeping ever since you started working on this issue 
in october of 2009? even the health care bill has passed...this is ridiculous!!!

@192: I've more or less given up on Chromium devs making the kind of sensible 
decisions that initially drew me. (Further reasoning and examples on my blog)

http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2010/04/18/google-chrome-a-testament-to-hubris/

These days, I'm just staying frozen at 5.0.342.7 while I wait for the competitive 
pressure to force Firefox to produce a UI that doesn't feel like molasses. (I would 
have stayed on a version prior to this change, but there were other bugs that annoyed 
me more)

I would like to be able to single-click-select-all in the address bar.  since there is 
so much debate over which way to have it - why not make it adjustable?  Like in 
Firefox: you need something similar to about:config where these changes can be made.  
(just adding my 2 cents :)

Yeah exactly, this kind of thing is a user preference some kind of radio button, and I'd advocate an 'about:config' 
style page to customise all these things as well, like Firefox has.

because linux wants to attract more people and get them to leave microsoft windows 
then at least lets make it optional its only right firefox allows the user to control 
this behavior. why cant google chrome 

+1: prefer default behavior be single-click-select-all. Because ordinary users do not 
edit URL, do not use extensions or preferences menu. Many people double click on html 
links. Many people use the computer this way. Triple-click is just a strange behavior 
for them.

But we, who are reading this right now, are reporting bugs, using extensions and can 
change it back to triple-click. So +1 for about:config where we can change default 
behaviors.

this is a browser. 8 out of 10 use it to browse not edit url's. chrome is 
fast...right? not with triple click! if i am wrong, let the user define what to do.
single click selects all please!! 

I agree. Single-click-select-all is a must. For all those who prefer triple-click, 
there should be an about:config page, like in firefox where you can adjust this. This 
would allow the average use to use the default, and the advanced use who prefer triple 
click to change this in about:config.

I wholeheartedly agree with single-click selects all.  I've been using the browser for 
some time with triple click and it still bugs the hell out of me.

Really, editing URLs is far less common than changing them.  But why not just make it 
configurable and make everyone happy? 

+1 for single-click selects all.

This behavior has made me switch back to Firefox.

Evan said "The patch to change it is a one-liner, but it won't be committed until it 
solves the issues raised in this bug.  Nobody who leaves a new comment on this bug 
reads any of the other comments anyway, so I doubt that will happen."

I have not read all 200 posts, but I've read enough.  I'm not sure what issues you 
mean, but I'll give it a shot.  If the popularity of this request hasn't made it 
obvious, people are not confused by single-click select as some posters have claimed.  
Also, some said that users just had to get used to it.  We've had plenty of time, and 
we're still annoyed.

This is the behavior we want (back)
-----------------------------------
Mouse-down = Caret placed
Mouse-up = If caret moved, select the selected portion.  If caret did not move,
select all.

The only use case supported by the current behavior is clicking inside of a URL and 
adding to it.  I'm a web developer and even I hardly ever do that.  I'd rather 
double-click at those times than triple-click or Ctrl+L all the time.  I hate that 
when switching windows, I have to give focus to Chrome, then Ctrl+L.  I'd much rather 
do both at once by clicking in the address bar.

For now, I'm going back to Firefox.  I hope I can switch back sometime since I really 
like Chrome.

I think several solutions have been posted.  I'm not sure if the devs don't want to 
change it, or if it being overlooked.  Some response would be nice either way.   Is 
there anyone capable and willing to create an extension, if possible, or fork to fix 
this?

 Issue 44343  has been merged into this issue.

Why have this "feature" ? If you guys asking us why we don't like it lets just put it
this way, I am not using chromium because of this "feature".

This is why I still Firefox!

about:config

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll
browser.urlbar.doubleClickSelectsAll

I can make it do what I want it to do. (come to think of it, that's why I'm running
Ubuntu)

REAL Linux users prefer double- or triple-click, because that is X's convention for 
selecting words/lines. You guys who are using Linux casually, switching to it in a vm 
from Windows to test your websites, etc, and then complaining that it doesn't match 
**Windows** conventions kill me.

Is there anything as REAL Linux users?
Is Linux some kind of religion?
The main reason why i use Linux is that i can configure it to fit my needs.
But this is not configurable.

Not sure what constitutes a "real" user, but I've been running Linux and FreeBSD as my 
only operating system for about 5 years.  I also have a server running Linux and I 
bought a netbook with Linux pre-installed.  Just because someone has a different 
opinion than you doesn't mean they are not as "good" of a user as you.

REAL Linux users think that Linux is about choice and don't try to dictate to others
what they should and should not prefer in their user interface.

REAL linux users are users like *rainexpected* who want choice and power over their
OS. REAL linux users are NOT like *cough*gary*cough*jefferson who sit in dark rooms
scared of change or choice who are actually closet OSX users.

Your mom is a REAL linux user.

@#206.

I am a REAL Linux user whom prefers single click selects all. Thank you.

Is Linux only for linux users?

Single click select all is not a Windows convention.

I am not a Windows user.  I don't have it installed anywhere, even in a VM.

Hahaha, I think the chromium team needs to add an option to turn off/on the one click
select all just so this bug/feature request doesent turn into a flames war.... or are
they to late? <insert dramatic DUN DUN DUN>

> 90% of the time, when I click in the URL box I want to type a new URL (or search 
term).  Therefore, I strongly prefer that click => SELECT ALL.  Please change it back!

P.S. You guys are doing a *fantastic* job, keep it up!

(No comment was entered for this change.)

(No comment was entered for this change.)

Sorry, I'm closing this bug from additional comments because most of the recent comments are rehashing 
reasons earlier in the bug and things are starting to get ugly.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

It seems clear from talking to Evan that despite my wishes to the contrary we're not going to fix this.  Given that, I don't know why we're leaving the bug open, it's just misleading.

 Issue 56642  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 60004  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 61067  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 156721  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 158726  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 160188  has been merged into this issue.

(No comment was entered for this change.)

 Issue 257587  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 288174  has been merged into this issue.

 Issue 311509  has been merged into this issue.

This was marked WongFix, ie a decision was made that single click should not select all on Linux.

But now it does.  Did we change our minds or is it a bug?

(No comment was entered for this change.)