The reference section in CX is not editable. However, users may try to edit it by swiftly clicking and pressing backspace without observing that the cursor has not activated in that section. This causes the previous/back behaviour of the browser on that particular tab. If unsaved changes exist then the user is shown a warning. There is no reason to believe that saving would be hampered but it may be surprising to the user if they are suddenly taken away from Special:CX.
Description
Description
Details
Details
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T115045 ContentTranslation issues with references (tracking) | |||
| Open | None | T108013 [CX2] Pressing backspace from the uneditable reference section takes user back in the tab |
Event Timeline
Comment Actions
Assigning to myself for testing in the near future. It's possible that this will be resolved when T139332 is done.
Comment Actions
... Although in CX2 this may be a VE issue.
To reproduce it in VE, add a references list, click it, and click it again (two separate clicks, not a double-click). Then click backspace. I'd expect it to delete the references list, but instead it works like a browser's Back button.
Comment Actions
I can reproduce using these steps:
Make sure that Backspace is actually a keyboard shortcut for "Back" in your browser; I had to add it in mine (Opera 60). That's why I thought this isn't reproducible when we had the triage meeting with @JTannerWMF. I vaguely recall some browsers removing this shortcut by default some years ago.
Comment Actions
The problem is that the second click moves the native selection from the paste target (.ve-ce-surface-paste) to the body, which causes keyboard events to not be handled.
Comment Actions
Change 508700 had a related patch set uploaded (by Bartosz Dziewoński; owner: Bartosz Dziewoński):
[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ve.ce.FocusableNode: Prevent native selection from changing on click
Comment Actions
Change 508700 merged by jenkins-bot:
[VisualEditor/VisualEditor@master] ve.ce.FocusableNode: Prevent native selection from changing on click
Comment Actions
Change 509127 had a related patch set uploaded (by Jforrester; owner: Jforrester):
[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (7e10b410b)
Comment Actions
Change 509127 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/VisualEditor@master] Update VE core submodule to master (7e10b410b)
Comment Actions
I am not sure what the next steps should be on this task. Perhaps @matmarex can let me know since it seems this was reverted.
Comment Actions
Someone needs to spend some time debugging why the patch caused T224042, and then update it so that it doesn't.
Comment Actions
Thank you for this context, Bartosz.
@Pginer-WMF, I'm moving this to the freezer for the reasons mentioned below. Although, if there are reasons you or @Amire80 see lead you to think we should prioritize work on this more highly, please let us know.
Reasons for moving to freezer:
- Few people are likely to be affected by this behavior:
- The "backspace to go back" behavior is no longer a default behavior in Chrome [1] or Safari [2]. Note: it still appears to be the default in Firefox and a quick Google Search did not turn up an answer about IE's behavior.
- A small percentage of people seem to use on the backspace to go back behavior [3]
- The behavior itself is unexpected, but does not result in a loss of work.
- Even in cases where backspace-to-go-back is enabled and contributors use it, they will be presented with a warning dialog before their changes are discarded.
- https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=608016
- http://osxdaily.com/2012/08/05/return-safari-6-delete-key-functionality-to-go-back-a-page/
- "We [Google] have UseCounters showing that 0.04% of page views navigate back via the backspace button and 0.005% of page views are after a form interaction." [Source](https://9to5google.com/2016/05/20/chrome-52-backspace-shortcut-gone/