Description

When pasting text into the search field (upper right corner) with middle-click (as usally done under X11), the search buttons ("Title", "Text") will remain disabled.

Steps to reproduce

Under Linux/X11 open any page, mark something with the left mouse buttom, paste it into the search fieled using the middle mouse buttom (or the scroll wheel). Note the search submit buttons will be disabled and the dummy text will be deleted when you left-click into the text field or when you middle-click paste something into the text field. But the submit buttoms will remain disabled afterwards, hence preventing the submission of the search term(s) with a single click. You will have to type a space (or any other character) and delete it (using backspace), or to mouse un-focus and mouse re-focus the text field, in order to enable the submit buttons.

• You will encounter the same problem if you DOS mode copy&paste, i.e. left mouse mark, context menu copy, right-click into the field, and paste.

• You will encounter the same problem if you first left-click into the field.
• I tested this with Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-AT; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050921, and with Konqueror 3.3 (KDE 3.3.0); with Opera/8.52 (X11; Linux i686; U; de) it's even worse, because the dummy text won't be deleted when pasting.

Details

Workaround

• See above: add some text and delete it
• See above: un-focus and re-focus the search field

• Submit the search request hitting Enter instead of clicking around

• With Opera, don't paste anything into the search field, or manually delete the dummy text (which will also enable the submit buttoms)

Discussion

Presumely the onchange="searchChange(this)" attribute of the HTML element input doesn't work as expected, or there are some errors in the scripts (JavaScript), or the design of the scripts.

An easy, yet radical solution for this issue would be to completely remove the JavaScript from the pages. - It is highly redundant anyway, because it needs to be transferred, loaded, and interpreted on every single page request. We would have to remove the dummy text, too. - I know that WCAG require dummy texts in search fields, but believe me, in this point the standard is wrong: If in doubt, the less JavaScript you use, the better is your accessibility. Furthermore, assistent technologies, like screen readers, read the content of the attribute alt of the HTML element input. Thus, even from the accessibilty's point of view it is better to beautify the alt text, which also means it should be localized, and remove both, JavaScript and dummy text completely.

However, if we consider this feature to be too "cool" to be removed, we should design it in a way that doesn't interfere with usability. Just have a look how they do it at e*ay, Wikipedia, or any other major page where you often use the search form.

• Seems like a browser bug, a paste should execute onchange= since obviously the contents changed. -- JohannesBerg 2008-03-18 18:57:21

  • If you bothered to read the description of this issue above, you surely wouldn't have failed to notice that one runs into this problem with any of the browsers Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror, and Opera. So, even if this was a browser bug, it would be an unavoidable browser bug, as it is encountered with any of the browsers available under Linux. Hence the Java Script we use needs to be optimized. -- MartinBayer 2008-03-18 23:12:39

    • I have bothered to read the description but I disagree, the bug is in all the browsers that show such behaviour. You can always turn off javascript. -- JohannesBerg 2008-03-19 00:12:12

Plan

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CategoryMoinMoinNoBug