Bug 552603 - Typing instructions in text fields conflict with X11 clipboard and sometimes with typing
Summary: Typing instructions in text fields conflict with X11 clipboard and sometimes ...
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Platform
Classification: Eclipse Project
Component: UI (show other bugs)
Version: 4.13   Edit
Hardware: All All
: P3 enhancement (vote)
Target Milestone: ---   Edit
Assignee: Platform-UI-Inbox CLA
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Reported: 2019-10-31 12:01 EDT by Stephan Herrmann CLA
Modified: 2019-10-31 12:01 EDT (History)
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Description Stephan Herrmann CLA 2019-10-31 12:01:47 EDT 
Throughout the IDE I see many dialogs with a text field that is prefilled with text like "type filter text", "type or select a site", which produces bad UX in two regards:

- On unix it kills the X11 clipboard, like:
  - mouse-select a text you want to use in a Dialog
    (it's now in the X11 clipboard, ready for middle-mouse pasting)
  - open the dialog, now the X11 clipboard is set to "type filter text",
    a string which I definitely never want to paste anywhere.

- Some dialogs don't properly erase the prefilled text, e.g.:
  Install New Software
  - "type or select a site" is selected
  - click on "Add ..." then cancel the dialog
  - click into the "Work with" field and start typing
  - your text will be *appended* to "type or select a site"


IMHO all this is due to the lack of true support for phantom text which should only be shown when the text field is empty but otherwise has nothing to do with the field's content.

Ergo I'm requesting that "background" text be supported in text fields with the described behavior. Right now in firefox I'm looking at a "Search" field with exactly this behavior, so at least GTK seems to have some support in this direction?