Fix firefox address bar clickSelectsAll bug (Spoiler: no re-compilation required.)

A couple of months ago, I opened my Firefox as usual, I found out that when I click on the address bar, it dared to select everything in it as if any creepy browser would do! The first thing I did is to check the clickSelectsAll pref -- what I always do first after getting a new install of Firefox on Windows is setting this pref to false, and setting doubleClickSelectsAll pref to true: that is the default behaviour for Firefox on GNU/Linux... that time at least...

Much to my disappointment, the pref are setting correctly, but nothing works. I tried to search for this, but without success, maybe since this bug was so new, or I was to silly to apply the right keywords (huh, maybe the latter one?). So I created an account on Mozilla's bugtracker just to open a bug. At the same time I switched back to the ESR version of Firefox, which rid me (till recently) of this stupid address bar but still granted me security updates. A few days ago, however, Firefox ESR was unfortunately eventually shipped with this bug, calling for a solution.

Some more background

Here I will add more background because I need to complain a lot (>w<). If you would like to see the solution directly, jump there.

Someone on bugzilla pointed out that the bug had been raised by someone else. Following that bug, I saw that the developer was being pretty toxic and just marked it as WONTFIX, despite many people criticized the buggy behaviour and regarded the original behaviour as signature of Firefox. I finally switched from Ubuntu to Gentoo after the new ESR, as I would like to have more control of my software.

Yesterday I talked to tiar about the freedom of users to make software behave the way they want, without necessarily being a developer. I complained that many free/libre software does not excel in this aspect, using Firefox >=75 as an example.

The thing Firefox developers does, by removing the clickSelectsAll prefs, is actually somewhat limiting users' freedom, as customization becomes harder and harder. This kind of freedom has been brought up by a KDE person as a goal called "freedom out of the box." In short, it aims to make changing the behaviour of a program as easy as just using it, probably unifying the interface where a program is used and where a program is customized.

And that is reasonable: no one should have to spend quite a long time reading an extraordinarily large code base just to make a tiny little change that would significantly improve their lives. We will simply not have that much time. I know tweaking system is fun... (should I say addictive?) but still, instant result is always a good-to-have.

The solution

For Firefox, we do have a solution without needing to recompile. That is, to change the omni.ja pack in the Firefox distribution. Based on that I managed to restore the old good urlbar behaviour.

For my firefox-bin on Gentoo, the relevant file is at /opt/firefox/browser/omni.ja.

First make a copy of that file:

cp -v /opt/firefox/browser/omni.ja omni.ja.orig

Then unzip the file:

mkdir omni && unzip -d omni /opt/firefox/browser/omni.ja

It may return 2, but does not matter.

Then edit the modules/UrlbarInput.jsm:

1. Change

   this._preventClickSelectsAll = this.focused;

   to

   this._preventClickSelectsAll = true;

   to get the clickSelectsAll behaviour.

2. Change

   if (event.target.id == SEARCH_BUTTON_ID) {

   to

   if (event.detail == 2) {
     this.select();
     event.preventDefault();
   } else if (event.target.id == SEARCH_BUTTON_ID) {

   to get the doubleClickSelectsAll behaviour.

   Note that this will not put the url into primary selection upon double click. This can be useful sometimes, if you just would like to replace the current url with the one currently in primary selection. If you would like to put the url into primary selection upon double click, which completely restores the original behaviour, change it to

   if (event.detail == 2) {
     this.inputField.select();
     event.preventDefault();
   } else if (event.target.id == SEARCH_BUTTON_ID) {

   instead.

I have also made a patch:

] diff -Naur omni-old omni
diff -Naur omni-old/modules/UrlbarInput.jsm omni/modules/UrlbarInput.jsm
--- omni-old/modules/UrlbarInput.jsm    2010-01-01 00:00:00.000000000 -0500
+++ omni/modules/UrlbarInput.jsm        2020-10-01 19:50:41.925266392 -0400
@@ -2225,7 +2225,7 @@
         }

         this.focusedViaMousedown = !this.focused;
-        this._preventClickSelectsAll = this.focused;
+        this._preventClickSelectsAll = true;

         if (event.target != this.inputField) {
           this.focus();
@@ -2242,7 +2242,11 @@
           this.selectionStart = this.selectionEnd = 0;
         }

-        if (event.target.id == SEARCH_BUTTON_ID) {
+        // doubleClickSelectsAll
+        if (event.detail == 2) {
+          this.select();
+          event.preventDefault();
+        } else if (event.target.id == SEARCH_BUTTON_ID) {
           this._preventClickSelectsAll = true;
           this.search(UrlbarTokenizer.RESTRICT.SEARCH);
         } else {

There is also the search bar to change. The original Superuser answer suggests this, but as I do not use the search bar, I have not tried it out, nor do I know what the original behaviour of it was.

sed -i 's/this\._preventClickSelectsAll = this\._textbox\.focused;/this._preventClickSelectsAll = true;/'  omni/chrome/browser/content/browser/search/searchbar.js

After editing, we need to re-pack the files:

cd omni && zip -0DXqr ../omni.ja * && cd -

And replace the original one:

cp -v omni.ja /opt/firefox/browser/omni.ja

You may need to change the ownership of the newly-created archive:

chown [U]:[G] /opt/firefox/browser/omni.ja

where [U] and [G] refers to the owner and group of the original file (we made a backup at omni.ja.orig).

To ensure everything takes effect, make a file called .purgecaches to make Firefox aware of the changes:

touch /opt/firefox/browser/.purgecaches

Okay, from now on, we shall no longer suffer from the clickSelectsAll bug.

Also, you may want to have additional configurations, such as disabling the pop-up list upon clicking address bar or gettind rid of the address bar expanding effect when clicked upon.