Bug 289869 – Can not click/tap on elements with user-select: none; to clear existing selections

• Component: UI Events
• Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

Created attachment 474581 [details]
Demo of the issue

In Chrome and Safari, clicking/tapping on elements that have `user-select: none;` do not clear selections within other elements.
Firefox behaves as expected, and lets you clear any selection by tapping anywhere.

A demo of the issue is attached, can also be found here:
https://testcase.rejh.nl/testcase-user-select-none-clear-selection/

Reproduce:

1. Go to https://testcase.rejh.nl/testcase-user-select-none-clear-selection/
2. Select some text in a message box (has `user-select: text;`)
3. Tap anywhere (except on a message box) to try and clear the selection

Expected result:
Tapping outside the selection should clear the selection.

Actual result:
The selection is not cleared.

Chromium bug ticket:
https://issues.chromium.org/issues/403871208

[Radar WebKit Bug Importer]

<rdar://problem/147684300>

Looks like this is not a bug but expected behavior:

> Attempting to start a selection in an element where user-select is none, such as by clicking in it or starting a drag in it, must not cause a pre-existing selection to become unselected or to be affected in any way. 
> https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui/#content-selection

And:

> Clicking in empty areas to undo the current selection will no longer be effective
> https://drafts.csswg.org/css-ui/#content-selection

Firefox has also adopted this behavior (bug no longer reproduces in Firefox 139.x)

This issue can be closed.