Re: Selectable text inside block level links (was Re: Clickable area for hyperlinks)

André Luís <me@andr3.net> skreiv Fri, 15 Jun 2012 21:36:08 +0200

> On a related albeit a bit offtopic-ish note (apologize for the hijack),  
> block-level links have a "defect" of disabling text selection.
>
> Tab (or anyone else, for that matter),
>
> given your experience, where do you think this "problem" is best  
> tackled? The what-wg, here (www-style), bug reports on all user-agent  
> trackers...?
>
> And by block level links I'm referring to <a> with display:block; or <a>  
> with block level elements inside (as permitted by the HTML5 spec).
>
> Now, if you have a paragraph (or a long portion), that text is pretty  
> much unselectable on all user agents apart from mobile, which can cause  
> frustration when using them.

I feel ignored. ;)

Opera has long allowed selecting link text, whether the link's box is  
block or inline. Since we recently added support for HTML Drag and Drop,  
we had to add heuristics to allow actually dragging the link. Now,  
dragging in an inline direction selects text, while dragging in a block  
direction drags the link.

This solution may be usable for other UAs as well, but as always, opinions  
will differ on heuristics (both "which" and "whether"). I agree with Tab  
that this is best handled with the UA vendors, rather than in a  
specification.

-- 
Leif Arne Storset
Layout Developer, Opera Software
Oslo, Norway

Received on Tuesday, 19 June 2012 16:19:59 UTC