Dragging a text selection on an RSS page can select all text above the intended selection

• Component: New Bugs
• Status: NEW ---

[boblet]

when I click-drag on an RSS feed page to select text for copying, the text selection automatically expands to the top of the page and includes the right column (gray background). Pasting this gives me all the text of the right column, then all the text from the feed until the bottom point of the selection. This doesn't occur if the selection only contains text below the height of the bottom of the text in the right column (the Actions: options) - selecting some text on the very bottom of the viewport and it works fine. I tested on a couple of feeds so I'm guessing it's something to do with the way Webkit makes the RSS page (rather than RSS errors).

(btw my workaround to select unlinked text is to double-click the first word, hold shift and then double-click the last word)

[Tim Coulter]

1. Open an XML/RSS feed in Safari's RSS reader.
2. Attempt to select a single word in the middle of the page.

RESULT: Selection expands to the beginning of the page.

This also affects Coda's Books section, which uses WebKit to display HTML-formatted reference material laid out with CSS techniques similar to those in Safari's stylized RSS reader.

[Tim Coulter]

Kind of reduced here:

http://www.panic.com/~tim/webkit/bug11516.html

Something about nested absolutely positioned elements and the "overflow" property.  The 'overflow' property seems to be the key. Using 'visible' or 'hidden' causes normal (non-wonky) text selection.  Using 'scroll' or 'auto' invokes the weirdness.

[Tim Coulter]

This appears to be fixed in Leopard.