[Bug 30857] Firefox mistakes clicks for drag operations

[Kristoffer Lundén]

You have been subscribed to a public bug:

When clicking on links, Firefox sometimes mistakes this for a drag
operation - while the link may often be invoked too, it leaves the
cursor with a hanging drop target which must either be dropped somewhere
or cancelled by pressing Escape.

This is nothing new, only just now came around to file a bug - after yet
another friend borrowing my computer got bitten by this. (And could not
find any previous, forgive me if I missed it after all). I've gotten
somewhat used to it although it is very annoying, but this behaviour can
cause all sorts of trouble:

* If the target is dropped into the browser it will invoke the link
target - this has caused people to lose typed data in web forms and
webmails, and copies of receipts among other things, that was not
possible to go back (POST data).

* Dropping outside the browser it will casue shortcuts on the desktop or
invoke whatever behaviour any application in the way will take upon
getting a link dropped on them. Untidy, at best. Could probably cause
real problems in the worst case.

This does not occur outside of Gnome that I am aware of, not KDE, not
Windows etc. It also does not occur in other applications in Gnome, so
it's likely something about the combination.

It may help a bit to lower drag treshold in Gnome all the way down, but
it doesn't work completely. That also affects all other apps.

I have no idea why this is happening, but it is very surprising to new
users and may cause data loss, so I think it is quite severe. Would be
nice to have it investigated at the very least.

** Affects: firefox (Ubuntu)
     Importance: Medium
         Status: Confirmed

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Firefox mistakes clicks for drag operations
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/30857