Version: (using KDE 4.0.80) Installed from: Ubuntu Packages ... at least I think so. Mostly when I click on the breadcrumb navigation widget to go to the line edit mode I do this because I want to go to a completely different directory, so it would be helpful if the location in the line edit would be pre-selected, so I can type another path like /etc right away. When I do this now its rather awkward to select all the text. Either I click the navigationbar thrice or I click it,do Ctrl+A and then start typing. When browsing for duplicates I noticed #157589 which is about the same thing, but only for the "F6" shortcut (which I just learned about btw :)) but not about changing to line edit with the mouse. Since it's basically the same thing think the fix should be applied to changing the navigationbar style with the mouse (clicking it or using the context menu) as well.
I disagree, the location bar should not select all on change from breadcrumb mode to text edit mode, as there is a button already to the right to clear all of the text. I usually end up changing just a little bit of the directory, i.e. from /home/kde-devel/kde/src/kdebase to replacing 'src' with 'build' , etc.
While I can see your use case I do not think that it would be affected severely by changing the current behaviour. In your case you need to use the mouse to move the cursor to the desired portion of the path anyway (no matter if the text is selected or not), so there is hardly any additional action required. In my tests on Dolphin 1.1 (KDE 4.1.2) the way you can click on / select text does not change in any way with the text beeing pre-selected or not. From what I see there is actually no difference for your case at all. I do not think that the existence of the Qt standard Clear-Button within any LineEdit box should be used as a reason not to have a more natural way of dealing with such common use cases.
Your right, I was under the impression that when the text was fully selected, it would interpret any mouse click + mouse move events, as a drag event, but it does not. It interprets it as a new selection, which is good in my opinion. In which case I don't disagree with this, since it really doesn't effect the other side of the case, in my opinion. The widget is called a KUrlNavigator and is pulled in by apps other than Dolphin too, like the file dialog iirc. I would like to see somebody else state their opinions on this also.
I agree with you, it's very annoying when you create a new tab and it preserves the last location, and you have to select all the text in order to change it to a new location T_T
*** Bug 236614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Resetting assignee to default as per bug #305719
I agree too. Here's a patch: https://phabricator.kde.org/D7944
Created attachment 107969 [details] Patch: pre-select text when entering edit mode via click After some discussion on Phabricator, I'm afraid this has to be a WONTFIX. Here are the reasons: 1. Many modern web browsers like Firefox actually *don't* pre-select the text when you click on the URL bar, and only do it when you hit ctrl-L. The URL navigator already behaves this way, so we would be reducing consistency with those web browsers, not increasing it. 2. The feature is already implemented via the "Replace Location" menu item with shortcut ctrl-L; if you want to completely replace the URL bar location, just use that, via the menu or keyboard shortcut, instead of clicking on the URL bar. 3. By entirely removing the option to edit without pre-selecting, this would impair use cases when you just want to edit a bit of the path and not completely replace it. That said, for anyone who really really wants this feature, I'm attaching a patch to KIO that makes it behave this way.